Lost To The Warp
by the snow shadow
Summary: Ivan Yorke. A halfbreed human in service to the Inquisition and guard finds himself dragged into the Immaterium and the Realm of Chaos. He finds himself made into a playing piece of a great game, one that could if he loses, mean his soul, and victory assures nothing. He, nevertheless, must try if he is ever to escape She Who Thirsts. Inspired by a Dark Heresy & Only War game
1. Prologue (1 of 2)

Many men say that they will travel to hell and back for whatever flight of fancy has enraptured their hearts or minds at the moment. During my youth, I made the claim far more times than I dare count, of that I will not lie. The fact about that simple statement is that most can say it and never have to go through with it. Few brave, or foolish, men can say that they shall take this katabasis, even fewer manage to find their way out. I am one of that foolish orpheui who did both while it was set against me.

I suppose that introductions are in order, though if you're reading my final records. well, I would hope you know about me. Once I was Ivan Yorke, Corporal of The Haven of Vulk's First Regiment F company. We were Commander Fiaura Fairgates' Flying Frags, today there is only one of us remaining.

From the Haven of Vulk from its stone I was shaped and the fires I was forged. A son of Mankind and a son of Aeldari, their two immortal songs flowing in my blood. With the gifts and horrors of both races, I have been blessed and cursed. As I look down upon the cradle of humanity, dressed in a cloak woven from the silken monofilament threads of crystal and wrathbone, it takes all my might to not smile with all hope of our rebirths and weep with all dread with what my peoples have fallen to. Still, though I believe strongly in the sigil of my brethren, Rebirth of Ancient Days. The symbol that once stood for my brethren. It is rather fitting when I think of it. Before my resurrection, I must speak on my death. For which plenty of logs exist stored away in the data archives of the Departmento Munitorum and the Inquisition. For this reason, I shall be as brief as I am capable.

It had all ended and began when we made planetfall. The mission had been issued by an Inquisitor, his name forgotten by time. It does not bear repeating, so with me, he shall die his second death of being forgotten. I was not truly thinking about it though, one mission to die was like any other. Smackaface and I were chugging a bit of brandy. The little shite thought he could out drink me and I was not let that slide. We regretted it rather quickly, would still have done it again though. The Gretchen are strange little Xenos, Smackaface doubly so. He although respected strength and merit and despite the occasional poncy git comment. I do not think he ever cared about blood, he was happy with me as his Warboss and I was happy with him in my singular 'Waagh!' as his kind call it.

Our Valkyrie barely hit three klicks from the drop zone before we were sent tumbling down faster than an Orgyrn with laced boots. Ork Stormboyz had to be shot off our rust bucket with our support's bolter fire. That turned out to be a far worse idea than it actually sounded. I had managed to jump, right as the tailspin started. The men of Vulk however are known as some of the best jump troopers and flyers in the Imperium. Fairgates' F company, well we had never found something that we could not crash. Twice in my career did I enter into a Valkyrie that did not either crash or send me flying from it without intention. This being true though, I would bet every gelt I ever owned, we were far more proficient at surviving crashes and emergency jumps than any other unit the imperial guard has or will ever know.

Kicking on my jump pack and raising my multilaser's antigrav plates into full power, I was able to maintain a sort of balance in my fall. It was a trick I learned on the forge world Epiris Three when that gun ended up saving my tail. I had missed the floating chaos gunship we had meant to land on. Jump packs fuel cell decided that the tech-heads had not treated it properly. Well, I ended up having to change up my jump pack's fuel cell while straddling the multilaser and hoping to do it before I found the ground at terminal velocity. All while dressed in the handcrafted plate armor, the tech-priests of the Mechcanicus had provided me. It was fun as all bloody hell, however, I would not recommend it. Maybe once actually, but no more than that.

I ended up getting chased through the forge deserts by what I could only call the spirits of inbred cultists, who had recently discovered the banjo. A rather archaic instrument which I would learn of some two centuries, of my life, later. Not a long story but one I was rather hoping would not repeat itself as I was once again falling. In the end, it was definitely not that and it ended up being worse, but for the time no banjos. Not sure if that was an improvement I rather liked the music as terrifying as it was.

No, instead we landed in front of the very pantheon that we were heading for, in the first place. The only problem was the sizeable Ork population that had turned it into their home. It did not help that the Sentinel that the inquisition had provided us was about as effective as an Ork trying to read gothic. A task for which I am more than acutely familiar with.

The thrice damned thing only did one useful thing and that was blowing up the tree next to me. I use the term "useful" rather loosely. I almost got splattered, but the new ditch was rather effective as a piece of cover. Silver linings, as they say.

Even once the Orks were dead. We learned that they had been well doing ultimately nothing. In many ways, perhaps the creatures were unwittingly protecting mankind from wandering into that den of heresy and madness. We walked into a land where reality had been torn asunder. With every step we took and every floor we descendent walked deeper along the Dantian path into an inferno of mans' desires.

The faithful of the temple were gone. They were nothing but the empty spaces in dust or water where their feet had last touched. I had thought something had been wrong and shot at what was not there. The air screamed as a woman fell to the ground. She though did not scream in pain but with pleasure. When we dare not hurt her again, what she became was far from human. We even found a wandering soul of a dead girl, barely eight Terran cycle's old. We watched her burn as we tried to save her.

We were forced to play games for which our very souls, beings, memories and more were used as our collateral. They were the prices for any hesitation or loss. Each a game to see us weakened before we could strike down the true master of it all. Each of these horrid games played for the pleasure of a daemon robed in the flesh of a simple elder. Not all would make it.

Our Enginseer would fall, to open the way past a staircase that had no end. we had to play a simple game of Regicide. The old archaic rules, no "hooded" board where only certain pieces are visible. He opened the way for us at the cost of his soul.

He opened the way to a floor where every door was alive and none would open until they were appeased. With the exception of one who had a rather personal problem with my Aeldari blood. After a short bit of negotiations, I shot it in its face until it was ripped off its hinges, and opened the way to the next horrid game.

A simple couple game of cards in which we bet that which was precious to us. The elder daemon whether to be sporting or taunt us even offered relics lost to time. Some lost the bodily strength, some lost times and memories. One of the Tempestus Scion offered all he was to win our way forward. He lost and became little more than a soulless automaton. She knew what she was getting into but still she was not much older than I, still a young woman. When she lost she was made into something little better than a servator of the Mechanicum. Kaylesser Seppetine, if I recall her name correctly. She was a nice girl, though most well know for getting her ass stuck in a minefield

We were not without our small victories though. A relic from the Emperor's great crusades and his very hand, one from ancient man an Edward Teach, a gift of a primarch, and the pauldron of a sister repentia turned saint. The last fit well with my knightly armor.

The games were nothing compared to the horror's we saw in its master's chambers. Abominations, that moved with some disturbing similarity to humanity. Each creature born from men whose bodies had been twisted. Daemons forced into mortals bodies, growing inside their hosts before bursting free into black carapaced beasts with prehensile tails and claws that could shred through tank armor like a chainsword against wet parchment.

Their great butcher, a fallen priest, was something none of us had ever imagined. A creature of only muscle and sinew and for every blow stuck upon it only made it stronger, For no sooner did its blood spill did its muscles grew that much larger. A pale imitation of Cu Chulainn held in the hands of a crazed puppeteer. A single blow against my helm nearly ripped my head from its shoulders.

I do thank that creature though, even as it burned in front of me, without it I likely would not have been prepared for what was to come. To know the true strength of such daemons, even if it was a shard that had replaced a mortals souls. The strength was awesome in its ferocity. I had not the time to so much as lift my blade, in parry, when its crude sharpened chopper impacted on against my head. It was the beast's final action as the damned soul's death began to claim it. A single swing would have cleaved the head from most men, split my skull. The gifts are the Mechanicus finely crafted armor and the arcane machinery of the dark age of technology flowing in my blood in all likelihood spared me.

Once it passed from this gap in our worlds, I could only collapse as Stubbs rushed to help me. A good man and one of the reasons many of us had yet met death. This had been taking his toll on him though. The young child burning almost broke him, I could see it in his eyes, but the man seemed to just keep calm and carried on.

My head still bled once I awoke. Neither Stubbs's skill or the arcane technologies the Mechanicum had long ago placed into my blood seemed to stop the profane wound, they were trying their best to ease my pains. I could the feel the machines knitting flesh, and yet they fought at some accursed toxin.

Once I was able, Captain Gunther made me vox a report to command. It felt nice to unsling the vox caster and tell the trigger-happy Inquisitor that he would not get his wish of blasting everything into dust. I have to wonder if the captain ever socked him, the whole company had been taking bets on how many teeth the whoreson would loose.

Captain Gun, now that was a hell of a leader. An Ogyrn and despite that, he was not dumb as Grox shite. He had what was called a bone'head implant, don't ask me about the technicals. A rather effective one at that. Still when he gave the order to push into the inner sanctum of the temple, well I could not have wished more that he did not. We marched to our death.

We did our best to regroup before we pushed into the head of this darkness. With a heavy heart and but a shred of hope still burning we pushed into the chamber of a great daemon and her parasitic children. The battle was nothing like we thought, we were broken before we knew it. Cam Phane, one of the Tempestus and a man of few words, was cut down by horrid macabre fire before many of us could so much as draw a breath. The poor boy did not even know he was dead for a time. He just kept firing until he dropped.

Captain Gunther and a fellow corporal named Winter Cassmire did their best to hold back the daemon's dark children with blade and fire, while the rest of us tried to cut them down. The grand hall we found ourselves in was filled with a symphony of lead and ballistic coughs. It dragged on for what seemed like forever. Spawns of hell covered in unnatural skeletal and biomechanical mechanical in appearance swarmed at us from every side. Their giant daemoness master watching us with great joy if not ecstasy, her muted grey skin twisting as she laughed at us. He was a creature of both equal parts allure and disgust, equal parts male and female.

Our munitions were running short after almost half an hour, every time we seemed to cut down one of the black beasts, ten more took its place. I am not sure how long it had been when I saw the captain fall and our lines began to crumble. Taking command, I order an instant push to grab the captain's body and then for them to retreat. I think Winter tried to argue, the words are fuzzy now, like a flickering candle. That damn woman always wanted a hero's death. Not to mention being the most self-righteous chaplain bitch. I really do miss her and our less than friendly rivalry.

Despite my dearest companion being dragged away, I promised the little Gretchen that we would get a drink as soon as I was done. I might also have mentioned I would kill him if he died. They were the last words any of them ever heard me spoke. They were not my finest words but they had to carry back a lot of the injured and no one had time for more words. I was also never much of a poet, outside of my poems, in my youth.

I did my best to keep the oil skinned abominations back for as long as I could though as my heavy gun clicked away its final shots. I grabbed the blade at my hip as the charged me. It was always strange holding it, an unnaturally comfortable flame filled my soul. My birthright sang like a harp as she was pulled from her scabbard. Its metal was the hue of emerald which shined like a newborn star in my hands, even in this lightless temple. I had rarely used it, as to do so was to other myself. The way the blade screamed as it cut down all it touched, reminding those around me that I was a filthy Xenos half-breed. A task that could be more than easily done without assistance, I being a strange lad before knowledge of my heritage. Nevertheless, I took it up knowing to do otherwise could spell my death, I would have to trust in it.

Without thought, I charged the daemon and its spawn, a prayer for the winds of fate to guide my sword. A call to the Emperor and Kaela Mensha Khaine to guide me. An apology for another to forgive me.

* * *

Yes it is a bit of an extension of a part of my other story tales of the gaurd, but from that it was built and as I went to Nanowrimo though I added more as I needed 50k words. I had him on my mind and as nov 2nd I wrote the story and finished the 29th. Now you get it as it goes through some basic editing.

I wanted to be brief with this, him getting into the warp can been seen on a youtube video of the game. thus it is not the main thrust of the story... I just have detail issues so two parts.

Why not check out my other stories on my Fictionpress of the same name.


	2. Prologue (2 of 2)

The bleak neverborn's abominations fell away with each strike. Their carapace skin providing no protection against the banshee blade. How it screamed with a bloody ethereal joy as it cut the spawn apart. There was another sound though buried in the screams, try as I might I could not discern its nature. Their insectoid like bodies boiling away as their acid blood began to eat themselves, their bodies no longer able to regulate themselves any longer. It was not them I was focused on though, the blade hungered for the true daemon that hung before me. The acid splashed against me, stripping the paint off of my armor and trying to begin to corrode it, but I never the less continued my charge.

Leveling my shoulder, I rushed into a batch of them, driving my blade into the skull of the first that stood in my way only a moment later, using my and its weight to knock aside others. I felt heard the sickly crunch of an insect under a boot as I rolled off of it. One of the abomination struck out at me with a long prehensile tail. It was spiked and impacted into my armored thigh. It jerked its appendage back, ripping steel like it was nothing. Half an inch to the left and I would have taken flesh. This did not halt me for a moment though, the luxury of thinking of one own mortality at that moment was not mine. I simply pulled free of one of the volkite bombs at my waist and as I sliced the next abomination from shoulder to waist. If the abomination who had rendered my armor thought I had ignored it, it was quickly corrected, tossing the rigged power cell behind me.

Flesh and chitin burned explosively into ash and jetting fire filled the air while the shockwave shook the chamber and likely the numerous floors above. I was nearly thrown off my feet though I kept in the charge forward. I can not say that my body was moving by its own intention as I spun the entirety of my weight around one of the beasts, quickly flicking the blade into the back of its skull. It fell forward its body eating itself as its brain was destroyed. I was always moving forward again though, not even noting if it had died. I could hear many of them rushing around me as I pushed closer.

The smile that hung on the daemon's face slowly being replaced with a snarl like a ghoul or a wright, as the champion of She Who Thirsts realized the sword-wind that came for her. It would die by my hand, no other solution was acceptable. Only when its blood was spilled and it sent screaming back into the hell from which it was born and tell its misbegotten kind that I had been the one to send, would I feel happy. The daemon prince's feature continued to twist as she swung her staff down at me. I caught myself only fast enough raise my blade in defense.

The artifact impacting with a force that had not come from the daemon wielding it. The glow amaranth eye that stared down at me at me. It looked at me, not with curiosity or anger or hatred, it was simply hungry. A pair of screams echoing out from the blade and staff. one that hungered and one that wanted bloodshed, and then the dance began. How my blade moved in our dance was beauty all its own. Like a maid so curious in her first gentle dance for a man she wished to court. Every moment elegant and defensive, shy but aggressive. No strike felt entirely my own. No movement or step entirely of my invention.

I simply knew what my blade asked of me. While I could have fought its will, if I had wanted to, I did not. It would have been a fool's gesture that in all likelihood would have ended me, I knew not the blades intention but. Instead, I submitted myself to the dance, singing words foreign to my tongue and yet they felt so familiar. The rapid syncopated backbeat of metal striking against metal. The eye's glow rolling across me, casting my armor in a similar light, my skin revolting at the tiny scraps of light the poured through the tears in my armor. My blade growing brighter each time it struck the cursed metal. The two lights fighting each other to see which was stronger, the daemon's crystal eye though shone stronger.

How long the two of us quarrel, I could not say. In the dance of death, time is an irrelevance. Victory though was never something within my grasp. At Least that is what I believed, I a mortal, it a prince of the dark lord of excess. For every wound that was inflicted on the daemon, it struck back thrice fold in anger. The armor that the Cult Mechanicus great smiths had pressed, was crumpled or bent unnaturally with every hit. My nostrils and tongue burned with the smell and taste of copper filled blood. The seal of Yorke upon my chest was all but burned away. The only thing that had seemed to remain undaunted beneath the blows was the pauldron. Whether craft or blessing it held strong against daemon, so I did my best to keep that side to the nameless horror as best as I could.

I was not fast enough though, as I took a single sidestep and my foot twisted and in the moment of folly. The daemon, leaving no mistake uncapitalized on, thrust the stave's amaranth eye against my chest with the force of a thunder hammer, it impacted into my chest piece which crumpled like a structure of sand. The next thing my mind was able to process was my impact on flesh bound walls of the chamber. I was shaking as my soul felt divorced from me, being dragged away by the dark lady. I could feel it being slowly ripped away like Mephistopheles was coming claiming to collect on my races Faustian torrent. The feeling was like I was having flesh ripped with a searing flame but where that would bring agony, it left only a cold void like sinking into an oily abyss.

The daemon was laughing at me, its spiked meter long tongue flailing about in the air. Now knowing what could happen, I rose to my feet. The daemon was quickly losing itself in it revery, so I threw myself forward, no elegance just anger. If death would take me I would die on my feet. It tried to swing down its weapon, a thunderous impact nearly dislocating my shoulder, though it did little to stop my charge. My. blade went sliding into the demon's heart and my vision went white as my blade burned and the two of us fell. The beast's guttural cry tearing at the few loose fibers that held the mortal planes apart.

Before I could process the shift from one madness to another, we were falling without moving. It was as if my soul was in translation and my flesh was merely a shell trying to keep up. My ears roared with a hatred that I have never known, a hatred that was not mine alone. It was the hatred of ten thousand years and dozens of souls rolling through my blade. Not even the deathly wails of the warp creature could match their intensity even as the Neverborn's soul, a term used in only the loosest of senses, burned way. Streams of flame the color of sapphires spilling from the wound in its chest, the fire quickly coursing its way through the daemon's body giving the entire creature this wonderous glow before gouts of unnatural light shattered its body. What remained of the daemon that which it wields dissolving it into a billion different colors. A death from which even a daemon could easily return.

I drew my blood slickened face up to towards what I could loosely call the sky by spinning my weight, though in such a realm the bounds of reality such as direction can at times be meaningless. Only to see myself falling just behind me. I gave a wave of my hand towards my others self and like a faithful hound, it fell all the faster. Whether I sunk into it, or it into me, I can not say, I can only testify to the sudden excreating jolt that ran along my body as soul and flesh were joined again.

And for a time I merely drifted in this endless miasma of lights, sounds, and feelings. The sea of souls, a name that realm once held, is a place like no other. I have no words for which mortal tongues could ever truly describe it. It has a certain horror and wonders in equal measure that would drive most mad. I floated in a land of eternity. I could see all that was happening, I saw everything that ever was, and ever would be, just shifting around me. I witnessed as the heavens were vast oceans, containing not water, but memories, drawn from the minds of dreamers, frozen in time, like paintings, perfect in each detail. I witnessed as the very essence of life, emotion, and thought collided in battle. Armies of undying and yet abstract notions fought with a physicality above their station. A realm where everything is true and so no truth could ever stand but for the merest moment, that dragged on for all of the eternity. Flames of peace destroying forests of warfare. All of it being washed away in great floods of faith which upon pillars love and lust. Only to crumble under the lecherous vines of greed.

Despite the oddity of it all, I found myself at peace watching it all, there was a wonder to it all. I knew not the trials that would await me and the strange powers throwing themselves at one another about me. I knew not of my supporters or enemies in this realm. I knew not even if I were even alive at the moment as I simply closed my eyes and tried to remember my better days, waiting for The Emperor's Light.

While still then young, I had lived a life of which some men could only wish to see. Yet no matter my age, there are those few burning brands that still scar my heart as much as it did in those days. No pain, even from the twisted horror of the immaterial could scar me more. My dear Marya, I could feel the gentle touch of that image of Hebe as our brashness assured hotter heads ruled the body. I thought of my dear Victor, a child to whom my earthly eyes had yet to properly behold. I thought of pact that I was breaking to them both.

I am not sure how long I fell, used in the loosest terms, but the sudden end was just as jolting. My body and soul seeming to collide with one another rather than settle into one another. Despite having what I had assumed to be falling backward, I landed on my feet. The sabatons of my armor striking against the pale, flesh-like, stone in this realm, made of the universal subconscious. I took not a moment myself though as I began to scan the area. Too many combats had taught me to be particularly paranoid when it came to the great enemy. A lesson only to be learned again many times in this realm.

In front of me, stood a series of great rings that grew progressively taller the farther they extended outwards. Each was a monument to excess and pleasure. The moans and cries echoing out from them formed a perverse imitation of howling winds as the force of them blew back my hair. I stood near the edge of a harrowing drop for which I could only just make out a winding methodical way down.

Behind me was a tower of imperceivable height formed of an unholy collaboration of painted colors and flesh rolling down to a shimmering alcazar of dreams and nightmares. This bastion of pleasures and pains stretched up near endlessly. I had not the time to look at its details though as I could feel the world began to bend as if it was trying to pull me into the palace. I need not have known what awaited me in there, instinct filled me with horror and tried to run for the edge and the path downwards. The very air was pierced by a horrid genderless laugh as spectral hands grabbed me, dragging me back.

And this was my death, of a sort. Now my rebirth... well that is quite another story. One which I knew I had to hold onto hope though if I was ever to be homeward bound. Though I knew well enough that I may never see any of it again.

* * *

The second part of the two-part beginning cause I just have detail issues.

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	3. Meeting a thirsting god (part 1 of 4)

My feet dragged against the fleshy stonework, finding nearly no traction as I tried to run against the spectral arms. The laughing only grew more intense at my struggle. It was an effort in futility as I had to brush aside the blood rolling down my face. A few loose drops had caused my vision to become stained crimson, and yet I kept my best to ignore this triviality.

I knew the truth on some level of what rested in the abyss beyond the doors of that Alcazar of the perverse and the profane. My blood screamed the truth to me, my ancestor's voices whispering to me songs of alacrity and calling the names of our gods and runes. Their blade screaming in my hands, it's unnatural nova-like glow now an ethereal blue flame that flickered about the blade. As I ran in this endless game I watched the world about seemed to only be drawing me in with a hunger of a being who could never know true sustenance. For that reason, it cherished every morsel all the more.

"Frak," the word came as a mumble, over and over again, as I saw that my actions had not gone unnoticed by the inhabitants of this horrid realm. Their shades slowly gathered about and watched me, like nobles might partake in the suffering of peasants, or a child might watch an insect panic without its limbs.

They were most extreme in their duality. Some were imitations of man and aeldari, nubile in form with a beauty that no being could match at least at first before one could bear witness to their most inhuman of traits. Some had strange bony growth breaking through the skin of their heads, long incisors sharpened and hollow with pulsing glands under the flesh of the roof of their mouths that would have been invisible if not for the unnatural glow. Others were far from humanoid, backs hunched like creatures meant for lopping runs with the ends of their limbs being distinctly animalistic from cloven hooves to pincers of a nephropidaeic nature. They were laughing at me with some great delight and yet none of them dared to come near me or my blade. There was a distinct glint of fear in the eyes of them.

The ground was shift under me trying to entrap my feet. I barely noticed until I felt the binds of flesh wrap around my ankle and force me to fall. My fall was not forward though, for as soon as both feet were no longer held to the ground the primal force tugged all the harder. My body lurched backward being dragged into the Tartarus that was behind the alcazar's gates. The shielded eagle's image that rested on my armor was quickly ground away, with a hideous death cry. I swung frantically with my to find blade some purchase in the stone and yet it does nothing to halt my sudden horizontal descent. Its edge only causing the plane to shake and for my fall to slow. In contrast to the pink flesh-like stone surrounding the palace, the alcazar's pavilion was the purest form of ivory that could ever be found, polished brightly and yet within it lurked horrid things.

It reflected the sky above, that endless miasma of color only to show what hid among that ocean. Beasts ever changing in shape fought one another for reasons that either none remembered or never existed, they were simply their fighting in Jörmungandr's poisoned sky. It was not uncommon to see a bat like monstrosity with a thousand eye battling would could only be called humanoid though its organs hung on the outside of its body. For a moment I saw a beast of fire, a mockery of an angelic figure, that was broken in twain vertically. One side was grossly incandescent and yet looking upon its features, frowning with a wrinkled forehead, it was confused. The other was so weak and yet had such a strength in its demenior, it grinned proudly so that it would not cry. It was far closer than the others, watching me. It was the last creature I saw before sliding through the doors of the Alcazar, which slammed shut as I did, cutting away the unnatural lights of the sea of souls. It had been trying to whisper something to me. What it wanted to say I could not decipher before sounded by darkness

Between the time I was dragged into the dark abyss and what I assumed would be a sudden splattering, well one has time to think. My blade found no purchase upon anything in the dark as I swung it about, forcing me to stop lest I waste the energy that I had. I felt unnatural winds blow around me and through my armor as if it was not even there. I had never thought my life you end like this, I had hoped I would be settled down on some world I had help conquer. At the very least I might have die while fighting. In the unreverberate blackness of the abyss there flashed before my mind fragments of a cherished treasury of daemonic lore; flashes of their arcane language. During my relocation, I counted no less than one hundred twenty nine letters, though I am of great doubt this was even a fraction of the daemon tongue. Being screeched at by strange rune, in a hole with gibbering text was certainly not the top of my list of how to die. Top thousand maybe.

After the time though, it well just became rather boring. First it was worrying, next terrifying, then maddening, then I was thirsty and tired, and finally bored set it. Only the sudden muted clang of my sabatons told me I had stopped. Given that my legs had yet exploded, well it was going far better than I was expecting. Although now, I was in a world of darkness, with the only light was the cerulean flame that hung about my emerald blade. Its light only reached so far, perhaps four meters in any direction. I tried to push myself up from the ground, and yet found it is a fruitless effect. In a huff of anger, I took a step back and pushed. It was not until that moment of failure, that the realization of this action struck me and I turned about with a wave of my sword. This seemed to elicit a chorus of inhuman laughter from the darkness, it seemed to echo all about me and yet nothing broke the inky darkness. All that hung in front of me, some distances off, was a singular light, dull and pink.

With no other course laid bare before me, I set a slow and methodical pace towards the light. I did my best to watch the dark for what might dare crawl out. Nothing past the cerulean light could my eyes divine though and once the hideous laughter stopped there was only silence. It was more than any natural silence though, this was complete in its utterances. It reached the point the only sound in the chamber seemed to be the click of my sabatons and the beating of my heat in my chest. Both seemingly so loud that they echoed in the dark before being snuffed out but some unnatural force. The low dawn-tinted light was growing larger now and as it did I could feel a dread rising in my gullet. I yet found my body transfixed by its allure, it wanted nothing more than to embrace it and also scramble away like a vermintide confronted with its prey. The former though took my mind, the latter took my body.

Where was the Emperor's light? The thought was a blade in my heart. Where was the great golden embrace of the lord of mankind, the seat for every worthy warrior beside him, at the Golden Throne of Terra herself? The promise made by a thousand earthly priests and confessors among the Guard. While I knew there were creatures that thirsted for my soul, I thought the Immortal Emperor's light might come for me. For surely this pale light was not it. I was correct, though that answer now and then was of no comfort. The light had begun to take shape as I grew every closer, it seemed to be the form of a female at first and then male. The figure was of an androgynous nature, I decided, as I grew ever closer to it. It writhed and played with the air in what could only be described as pleasure.

The ancient blade in my hand begin to burn ever so strongly, that I almost dropped it. Among its flame's a sudden tortured cry pierced my mind. The sound was distinctly ethereal though I could hear anger like no other. The sound was familiar though in some ways, as if I had heard the voice before, though I could not place. While it roared though, most surprisingly to me was the small singsong laugh that was a whisper almost hidden in it all.

The pain and surprise though in some ways it was my savior as the jolt stopped my wandering feet and I could muster but a few words. They were meek a first, "who are you? Where am I?" It was to no one in particular actually, but it seemed to work in most of those stories produced by lowly wanna be remembrancer within the pages of cheap, popular chapbooks printed on thrice recycled vellum. I never took an interest to them for a time, but marya loved so most nights I read to her. They grew on me.

To my utter surprise the light spoke, although without a voice, its words seemed to echo in my head. "It's me, come now Ivan..." Its speech ended with a whisper echoing the words like a midnight love would into one's ear. At first the voice was distorted at first, though I could hearing it changing, growing ever more solid.

"We have so much to do...", what was most shocking though was the familiarity in its voice. It was almost like my dear Marya, though that strange transient warp to it made it feel incomplete and wrong to her. I wanted to say something, anything, in response to denounce it, but it was her voice. The more I tried to think about it the harder it was to focus my thoughts.

The tiny figure made of light craned his featureless head in my direction and seemed to know my thoughts."Come now Ivan, we are going to be late. Father is still angry with you and Victor is getting tired. Please, Ivan."

I remembered those words so well. I pulled away from the merchants table, they had been little good luck trinkets, but none too my fancy. "if you're tired, you don't have to blame him." She had been holding her stomach most of the day. It was the Feast of the Emperor's Ascension, one of the few days the great mining constructs of the mechanicus stopped and most of the local PDF were free for the day, well besides a few unlucky grox sites who pissed off their commanders. I was not one of them.

I could see the pouting lip as she tried to punch my shoulder, her hand smacking against my flak armor and mumbling, "you know it's not fair, if your wearing that," under her breath. I looked to my side and pulled us away from the merchant lest he complain.

Pulling us away, I took up her hand and asked "does it hurt?" she only gave me an annoyed humf. I rolled my eyes and pulled up her hand and giving it a quick kiss."That better?"

She did not want to look my way, but as she did I could smell the recaf on her hair with the barest hint of lavender. "No," she smiled at me in a way I knew that she was going to use this against me later, as she gripped my hand and pulled me along. Not to disappoint. I went along with her through the endless crowds, I watched her silken dress fluttering with every step.

A rather dumb smile was plaster across my features as she urged me to move faster. It was not often we had little moments like this. Not since I joined the PDF at least, but it made the heart grow all the fonder. I must admit the corpse rations I got were better than when Marya tried to cook. Even the dark gods would shiver at that horror.

Much of the crowd parted ways for us, a gift of the uniform. It was not long before I was in step next to her. It was quite between us, contrasted by the loud echoing halls of the hive city. "Are you sure you want the name to be victor?" I asked after a moment.

I would have continued walking if I had not felt a sudden tug from keeping me from taking another step. A light clothed hand wrapping around my gorget, its soft silken fingers caressing the back of my neck. In my surprise, I turned away from Mayra with a jolt. A whispering laugh in my ear. I was no long in the great metal halls of my hive city. The illusion broken with the rubefacio light now a small star of burning color.

There was just darkness behind me, with the strange rubefacio dying my skin an unnatural hue. The darkness though seemed different at this point. It was not pitch perfect in its totality as if it had been cracked, whether by the now great light or the sudden jarring. The first broken chip of paint in a masterpiece that would one day that would be not but dust or the first wrinkle of one woman that was meant to be a crone. There were shadows that were so much darker than the others, they were vaguely humanoid in shape. They writhed in some inhuman ecstasy as they performed some debase acts that my eyes could not witness.

Some of the figures in the dark were watching me though, their heads vaguely craning in my general direction. It was infuriating, I was not some toy to be played with or some simple beast they could watch as I was herded. I was man and aeldari, warror born and I would not walk to my death. I was many thing, but I would find myself in hell before I let them toy with me. Given that I was in what man could only call hell, my youths' brashful thinking seems not a bit ironic, still though the intention of my thoughts was clear.

In an act that to this day, I wonder whether it was some base instinct of anger that drove me to it or if it was the will of the blade in my hands. I held aloft my blessed sword, closing my eyes, charging, and into the gut of one of those shadows I thrust it in like a spear. Where once there had been cracks in the facade now it began to shatter in its entirety. No longer was the creature shrouded in darkness. At first, the blade found no purchase as if it was just a trick of the light, but as I pushed deeper into the lightless realm, it struck home but into what I could not guess.

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	4. Meeting a thirsting god (part 2 of 4)

From first glance, it was feminine, yet impossibly twisted and shamefully intriguing. Closer inspection would have shown me that I was mistaken, for the being like many of its fellows were hermaphroditic. Its skin a mix of bruise-like purple and pink. It wore little to hide its form, in fact, it wore nothing more than tanned human flesh, that seemed to enwrap its form. It was more than I cared at the time to mind as I twisted my blade in its gut.

Its lithe body shook as it fought to maintain cohesion, the whorls of pigment from its gaudy tattoos forming dizzying fractals of color and shape as it convulsed. How it screamed. The sound of that monstrosity dying though bore me more joy that I could rightly say, I felt a gentle appeased hum from the blade I held. It thirsted for the death of all that was around it. A sentiment that its wielder was not at all opposed to, of which I can personally assure you.

The darkness shattered like glass, its pieces rain down in an onyx shower around me. The shards steaming away as the fellow upon the ivory floor, breaking into infinitely many pieces until the dissolved around him in a thick miasma.

From the world of nothing, I was plunged into one were every sense was in constant danger of being overloaded. The air itself was a thousand ever-shifting colors, filled with a chorus of another thousand bands all playing their wondrous songs which individually were beautiful, but mind deafening sound together. They were only half as loud as the moans of pleasure and pain, a true choir of the demented. The smell I dare not describe for I feel sick even remembering them, these centuries later, but few fluids the human body could produce were absent.

Above my head was arched ceiling of impossible height. It was in a constant flux as hundreds of nubile muses swung about from swings high above, throwing about paints of impossible colors that should have been unseeable to the normal eye against a fresco. Their brushes moved with speed and grace that seemed wrong with their relatively human forms. They created images of couples engaging in the sweetest of acts to whole orgies feasting upon the sins of one another, neither the acts cannibalism or rape were uncommon. The constant clash of the artists and their paints though assured that ever higher innocence and depravity were reached. Around me, though the acts committed seemed to be in direct competition with the painters high about, trying to prove they were far more depraved. I felt my stomach lurch at what I saw and yet I was unable to look away as creatures, they not unlike the one which writhed against my blade, engaged in base hedonism.

The Daemonette tried to pull away from my blade, but I gave it no quarter as I drove forward. With a push, I tackled the monstrosity to the ground. Its struggles and screams only grew louder as it was pinned down by the blade. Its fellows seemed either not to notice or not to care, either way too consumed in their own actions. It tried to grab me with its clawed hands though as it began to move I turned the blade in its guts and its body lurched in some semblance of horror and ecstasy. My blade's ethereal fire had begun to consume the daemon when shifting my footing and drove the blade upwards, slicing the creature entwine up to its head. The daemon continued to scream even to its last moments, its body simply burning away in a wondrous blue flame.

The daemon convulsed, glowing with unnatural light as it seemed to break apart and a gale of force washed over me like a wind. While caught off guard I gripped my blade and held as the false gust bashed against me. The creature itself suffered a far worse fate, its body shifting into little more than a heavy sizzling ink that only melted into the floor and vanished.

I smiled beneath my helm and rebreather, the damnable neverborn warp spawn was dead. While some of them kind were near unkillable it seemed that well that one was rather disappointing for its kind. Pulling free my blade, I smiled, either that or this was far more dangerous in the immaterium than it was the mortal realm. As in I was now far more dangerous. This comes to mind, unknowing that many neverborn deaths annoyance temporary, and my action amounted to annoyance. That did not stop me from feeling like I had just well, destroyed a fething daemon. It does make you feel like the Emperor's fucking champion.

Showing the respect my enemy deserved, I enthusiastically spoke "Know the Emperor's light, you warp fethed motherless bastard." Very enthusiastically I should admit. They were simple words that I had grown used to saying upon finishing off the heathens and traitors for months now, they were second nature at that point. The effect they seemed to have on those around me though was far more, shall we say profound... no, noticeable, than most circumstances. The cacophonous masterpiece of numerous unseeable bands suddenly altogether played a singular note. The last note of every song. Silence.

It was at this moment that I had become acutely aware of the fact that it was no longer simply a few eyes watching me. They all were. Every single oil black inhuman eye. I stumbled to my feet, using my sword as a crutch to assist in my ascension. The only sound that echoed through the chamber was my war-torn armor screeching for relief.

Whether it was simply fear, stupid bravery or something else, I lifted up my blade up again and pointed at the closed batch of beings. More of those Daemonettes and figures that were more clearly human, tortured and pleasured all the same. I looked at them, pulling my battered helm and rebreather from my head, ringing as it bounced against the stone, "in the name of the Emperor, repent and embrace his light or face bloody wrath." Whether I was fueled by simply fear, stupid bravery or something else, it was still something incredibly foolhardy. I was a far younger man although back then, one who had always lived in the moment and loved the spectacle. I still do.

The reception to my actions was not exactly what I had been expecting. What I had actually been expecting with that declaration, I have either long forgotten or repressed the knowledge to confess the truth. The actual effect my actions had on the horde was far less grandiose or in my favor than I has wished. The horde of damned souls and spawn of she who thirsted looked at me in silence and soon enough began to surround me, laughing. They laughed guttural laughs with dark intent as in their eyes I could see the desires they thought to enact on me.

They smiled unusual smiles filled with teeth filed like razors and daggers, with the mutilated tongue oozing toxin. I gave a swipe to some who thought the could get too close. "Come now, you fucking cowards too scared to fight like a man," I tried to roar at the closest of them, in truth I was terrified beyond all fething belief. No doubt they could sense this, but by Terra's sake, I was not going to show it, Swing at one of the beasts that was trying to be brave before I add the falsity, "I have killed worse than you lot." This was the farthest thing from how I had wished to die and even farther from how I thought I might actually die. Still, as a young man at the time, almost two decades of age, I had always hoped for being smothered in the embrace of the fairer sex. To its credit, even at this age I certainly would not mind it now. There is a blissful simplicity to it. The cretins, heretics, damned and daemons, and mutants gathered ever closer, I had quickly began to regret my choices.

That was when the air was pierced with a sweet and innocent laugh. "I have not seen a mortal either so oblivious or stubborn, in... such a long time." At the mere sound of the words the unholy throng and stopped in their revery, all turning about to a single figure at the center of the chamber. The figure was a young slender ivory woman draped in the whitest silk, she radiated with the same rubifacio light, leaning all so comfortably on a klinai raised high above the others and looking down upon her throng.

She looked up at the one figure who stood vigilant to her side, "I believe that was you, darling..." She lazily ran a slow hand across the figure's silver armor, "so persistent your kind..." She barely moved her mouth and yet her voice echoed out loudly and yet sounded as a whisper. Her every word like the moan of a midnight lover. For a time she seemed distracted by her reflection in the armor, in time though She looked the throng that had begun to ensnare me and shook her head, "now, now my little ones... We have a guest and you are being unbearably rude to our ignorant guest. He simply does not know yet how to be polite, do you, Sir Yorke?" Her every little word was like the melodic songs of a siren.

Where I had stood tall, my pose faltered. I could not help but look at it, utterly dumbfounded. "No miss. I ummm..." My tongue felt like lead in my mouth. She, he, it was unnatural. A form sculpted by the finest remembrancers hands into that which was perfect. It was wrong though, it's perfect nature was its imperfection. The wonder of art is produced by its flaws and she inhumanly lacked them, to her being unnatural. I wanted nothing more than to touch her skin and yet found myself repulsed. She gave a wave of her hand as if demand me to speak, and as if a weight was lifted I regained some sense, "I never intended to be rude..." I had begun and could not continue, "I am sorry but what is thy name?" Though even as I asked it, some part of me knew.

"Oh darling, it's rude to ask a name..." she looked at me with her enchanting rubifacio eyes which seemed to subtly change in hue as they watched me. A hunger burning in them, my mouth turning dry and ashen under her gaze. "And my real name is a very private thing," She snickered as if she spoke a joke that I had not noticed.

"Tis only fair is it not, you know mine," I pointed out, in some ways to learn about my new host and to delay the inevitable. I was rather certain that I would not enjoy whatever she intended for me, not sure why daemons are none to be such great hosts. For my less informed reader, I am being sardonic.

The master of this throng stopped after a few moments, tapping a sharp nail across her chin. Her lips curled at me showing teeth both perfectly white and sharpened to a point, "I believe you kind have given me a name though." she rolled from her back to her stomach, her legs kicking back and forth like a child listening to the vox. The temptress leaned forward, pressing her chest against the stone klini as if to accentuate her womanly charms. She raised a simple hand, calling to me with a single finger.

I felt the ring on my hand feel as if was suddenly tighter as a clammy sweat came over them. I took a few steps forward, though she was still a good thirty meters from me. In time though I seemed to have gotten significantly close and seem to lean down just a bit more and began to whisper something. I felt her words in my ear, her hot breath pushing into my ear and rolling down my neck, "I am She Who Thirsts…. Slaanesh." Her laugh was small, ethereal, adorable and yet hideous in my ear.

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Sorry that this one took so long, I have just been busy with getting ready for my next college semester and such. But yeah... meeting she who thirsts... what could go wrong. I mean a sick and twisted god with a bit of a fetish for pain.

Why not check out my other stories on my FF or FP of the same name. Thank my one guest reviewer wicked jester, I am assuming you are my first reviewer. Thanks Alerik for the fave and follow. Thanks blingmx3 for the fav.

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	5. Meeting a thirsting god (part 3 of 4)

The name filled my stomach with a cold void and my heart began to pound in my chest. While I subconsciously knew to some degree that she was not human, well I had hoped she was far less. I had then little doubt her appearance, as alluring and even innocent as it was, was little more than an illusion. I found myself terrified and filled with anger at one who had but moments before left me disarmed.

"Oh my apology, I oft forget how sensitive your kind are to that topic," her tone clenched my teeth with her blatant false empathy, "I... well I thought I might expect, a bit more of you. I mean you are not truly one of them." There was audible joy in her nagging words, one that taunted and poked at me, "Only a half-breed."A shrill intolerable chuckle sprouted from some of the inhabitants of the room, those who had yet gone back to their profane orgy, it was barely audible between cries of pleasure and pain. My teeth set on edge.

I knew little of my inhuman heritage. Only what I had managed to pry from veterans and the senior officers who had fought my brothers and strange visions that called to me in the witching hours of my sleep. Siren calls of my arcane blade. It whispered to me words, ideas, stories, family history, and so on. I thought I was to be shot the first time I let slip some of my erstwhile brothers' tongue.

I had personally only ever seen at that point the Kabalite of my Drukhari cousins of Commorragh. I was busy fighting the accompanying chaos raiders though, given the need for heavier weapons and knew nothing of my bloodline then. Smackface tried to turn what remained of the aeldari raiders into a stew, without the regiment knowing where he got the meat. I personally do not recommend it, first off the meat is rather too chewy and while I while I would still have taken it over ration bars, well the drugs are not always cooked out of their system. It offers a good deal of flavor but by the throne, it shall bend you over. Take that as you will.

But returning to matters of import, the prince of excess looked at me and began again to laugh as if she knew what I was thinking. It is not improbable to assume that she did. "Oh darling did a sensitive subject. You must excuse me, sudden guests are so rare." She mused with a wave of her hand, though she turned a surprising human motion into one that "normally none get here unless I want them too. Though I will assure you that you shall be very well taken care of from now on." My hand was slowly growing numb from my ever-tightening grip, it would only be later that I would see the bruise upon my hand.

To say I acted irrationally is perhaps the best term that could be used. It is perhaps too kind, but at this moment it is the term I shall use. I had stood there for a moment, letting an anger stew. I had never like that term, no doubt why the daemon used it. Since the day I found out what I was. Commander Fairgates had looked me over, snapping at my ears while tech-priests of the Magos Biologis worked their arcane sciences. All around we're whispers. Half-breed. A term that made it sound as if I was lesser than the others. Did not matter what I killed, whose arse I had pulled from the fire or anything else. I was the half-breed now to all but a few and one was an ork. A few I was now lost too.

I let out a breath I did not know I had been holding and uttered one single command to that facade of god-hood, "take it back." My words seemed to only make the laughter grow louder as if I had been joking. I took a step forward to this Dark Prince, an act which only seemed to amuse its children. There although was something else. The briefest hint of something in the eyes of a few though, surprise. "Take it back daemon filthy..." My grip on my blade grew tighter to the point that I could feel the thousands of pinpricks of it going numb.

The silver warrior next to the dark prince began to move until his master set a delicate hand upon him. "Oh, he's hateful, how… primal" She Who Thirst mused on the idea, which a voice that sounded like a young progeniuem girl receiving her first assignment. Some of her servants began to move in front of me, but she simply waved them off, "no, no, let him pass. It has been so long since someone tried stabbing me with a long hard blade." And like that her hoards slowly began to depart clearing a path for me to walk, "come, come if you can little half-breed. Show me just how deep you can get." A spindly devious smile formed on her lips as her eyes darkened.

At first, I gladly took up the challenge, but with my next step my legs began to deaden and some unknowable weight seemed to fill my bones. A caress of weakening pleasure flowed into my blood. It was subtle at first but with every step, I took it only seemed to get harder. I never grew any closer, the distance growing as if to taunt me. Stubborn like a grox though I did all I could to push through it. This she daemon from the blackest of hells, no matter if it deemed itself a god or not, would not degrade me for my blood. It had no right. That is at least what I had wished to believe.

I realized far too late that this was a grave error. My pulse quickened as some invisible hand seemed to wrap around it, its long sharp nails slowly grinding at its flesh. I inhaled painfully and could not find the strength to exhale. These thousands of cuts slowly spreading forth across my body like a parasite or infection. It was paradoxical as I wished to keel over in agony and pleasure. Stifling a pained cry though, my attention turned briefly to my fellow inhabitants of this profane palace.

The great host of the demonic and the damned did not seem to bare me much notice any longer. Most of the misbegotten neverborn returned to their playthings who cried out in both pleasure and pain. I did my best not to look in their direction again as I made my way forward, not that I moved with any amount of alacrity. My charge had faltered to little more than a jaunt and my legs were slowly beginning to give out, upon me. Some invisible weight felt as if it was compounding upon me, made all the better by growing swarm of nonexistent cuts growing across me as the creeper that girdles the tree. My lip was bleeding as I bit harshly down to stifle myself from making a sound, lest I allow it to portray my pain. A fruitless action for being who not only sensed but feed on it. I had never a weak man, in my youth more than one brawl had been won merely because I remained standing while the others were too tired to raise their fists again. This pain though was new, searing and yet as it faded one could only long to feel it again to have it to return and want nothing more than it gone, not unlike the touch of a spite-filled lover. I use better in the most sarcastic of manners my dear reader.

Despite all my bravado, all my endurance, it was not long before my legs gave out. It was sudden, I was leaning into another step when my back leg simply refused. Muscle pain leaving it immobile and I had not the strength to catch myself. Upon the ground, I collapsed with a series of deep ringing crashes. My armor ringing against the polished marble.

The last thing to hit the ground was my blade, its blade leaving a thin cut as easily in the immaterial realm as it did mortal plane. And there I laid, unsure of what was to become of me. My head tried to look up at the god of this realm, but as I tried to raise I felt a great force slam gaze down. There I stayed as some kaleidoscopic mixture of fluids from the debase acts about me slowly wormed its way in my direction.

Despite the circumstance being wholly inappropriate, a jaunty little song began to play in his head. It was a simple dirge, I heard long ago from my mother. I rarely remembered its words completely, but now its lyrics played in my head. She told me it came from Terra itself, I am still not sure if its true, but they felt right at this moment.

"Do not stand at my grave and weep:

I am not there; I do not sleep."

I felt vibrations ripple through the stones as well, the heaviest of footfalls. Something was coming towards me. It was with a clear mind that I resolved it to be my death. I saw no method to escape even if I could flee.

"I am a thousand winds that blow,

I am the diamond glints on snow,"

The endless incorporeal knives we slowly cutting their way into my throat and yet I felt compelled to sing the words. The footfalls growing stronger bolstered by a pneumatic hiss.

"I am the sun on ripened grain,

I am the gentle autumn rain."

The words now a whisper near the back of my throat. It was oddly calming, though it was but a single proper note in a symphony that has long ago run amock. Its conductor was slain, and now a madman was using his spine as a wand.

"When you awaken in the morning's hush.

I am the swift uplifting rush."

The indulgence of pleasure continued about me, with enrapturing pain causing me to writhe beneath the armor that I wore. It vibrated with cries of agony and pleasure that felt utterly twisted to me, yet I could not stop myself from feeling it. I did my best to focus on the little dirge hoping to distract myself.

"Of quiet birds in circling flight.

I am the soft starlight at night."

A moment later in front of me a great and heavy silver, ceramite boot fell. I felt a sudden jerk upward as a mailed hand wrapped around the gorget about my throat and lifted my skyward. The armor was may have once been immaculately inscribed with wondrous golden text and symbols. The sigil of an open book with a sword running through was brazen across it. It was now scarred with the burning symbol of the ruinous power, whose names I curse. As it held me on high, awareness of its nature became evident well before I looked into those cerulean blue lens.

"Do not stand at my grave and cry:

I am not there; I did not die."

I continued although just to spite this lap dog and its master. If I was to die, I was to die with a song on my lips. It was an absolutely horrid rendition of the ancient song, but it warmed my heart nonetheless.

"Do not stand at my grave and weep:

I am not there; I do not sleep."

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A futile struggle against a great being, and funeral song... I really need to edit these faster as its all written XD

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	6. Meeting a thirsting god (part 4 of 4)

If the fallen angel had thought there was in merit to the song, he did not seem to react. Yes, his helm concealed me from seeing his face, but he could at least have articulated his thought on it, but he chose otherwise. I recall being somewhat offended by that fact, though the fear of what would happen to me was more pervasive. The folly of youth I presume.

A crooked, half-hearted smile wormed its way across my bleeding mouth, seemingly having bitten it as I fell, "What holds your tongue traitor? You know I've killed a few of you black-clad brothers. How they popped in that armor. Pop. Pop. Pop!" The words, hollow as they were as they smacked from my lips, felt all the better given the situation. He had me by the throat, the metal of my gorget bending in his hand, thus I chose to forgo mentioning that I was far less armed than I had been. My taunts though were rather successful in eliciting a reaction, as that titan among normal men growled at me. It was deep and guttural, inhuman in a dozen ways. We were both more than acutely aware of the fact, that in my current predicament the Astates could have very easily broken my neck. He wouldn't though, not without his master's permission. Being in the land that man once one called Hell, Gehenna, Tartarus and the Underworld, I thought my predicament could not get so much worse.

That sentiment was wrong, but the insult I flung was satisfying never the less.

If I had known before, that approaching She Who Thirst had been what the daemon lord wanted, my feet would have long halted long before, but that bit of hindsight is always abundant. She Who Thirst simply gazed like a hunger from where she lazed. Her silver clad minion turning my head so I might see so I might look upon her. My stomach revolted against me and I would wager if the last thing I had eaten had not been several hours previous it would have emptied itself. The Prince was changing slowly, her pale skin quickly turning a deep grey. Her hair changing into flowing gold that moved by some etheric force like she was submerged in water. The dark skin was breaking as two pairs of horns broking from the daemons head as golden spikes began to worm their way through her skin. Its flesh rebelled against it, as the sides of its form became broke. One half was distinctly male and other-other female.

"I wanted to be polite," her voice was broken, seemingly male and female at the same time, holding an anger that burned with a heat unknowable to man. Her very palace seemed to shake with her every word. "I truly did. You slew one of my favored champions, I forgave. You came into our realm, a flea among gods. I invited you into my wondrous palace, let you embrace its beauty. You slew one of my daughters, I ignored. You spoke the name of the Anathema and I merely corrected. I showed you my soft side because it was so long since I had a living Aeldari to play with. You just had to go and disappoint me, threats are not something I take from my lessers." She swung her legs from her kline and rose up, both from her seat and in actual height.

So I hung in the shadow of the Prince of Excess as her silver knight held me aloft ready to snap my neck at his mistress's word. Gid my best to look away but the more I tried, the harder it was. The way she subtly shifted grabbed at the soul. There was a horrible smile on the blacks lips of She Who Thirsts, "you have squandered my kindness, so I shall have my plaything, and see how long until you yield and beg me to give you... release." She looked down to her little doll in shining silver armor and with a wave of her hand ordered, "take him to the Nemi and let my daughters play with him... perhaps have them make me a drink." The traitor began to carry me off, pulling my sword from the stonework as he did. The daemons did not look in my direction, none dared attract the ire of their prince.

A ghastly chilled breath broke against my back. From the corner of my gaze, I looked upon a silver gateway that he not been there before, and from it spilled an unnatural darkness that spilled out like a mist that grabbed and coiled out. A panic, instinctual and primal rather than one with reason, filled my blood as my began heart beat quicker. I did not go softly into that lone night. My best struggle against the fallen angel did nothing. As my hands struck against the ceramite and adamantium I could do nothing to phase the silver knight let alone free myself. With great effort into struggled for naught and screamed at them all. I screamed in rage, it seemed better to die loudly than to go gently, hurling whatever profanities I could muster.

For my a moment my gaze shifted upward towards the ceiling to see the ever-changing fresco, the image was changing into a crude imitation of myself with six long spears sticking into my back and erupting out of my heart. The artists laughing as the fresco was soon enough pained over once again. It was my last sight before the silver knight reached one of the great archways that dotted the chamber, beginning a descent down a flight of stairs and I was plunged into the dark crypts below.

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I know this one was a little short it should have been posted long before but college got me distracted and I promise the next shall be longer. This just happened to be the end of chapter 1.

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	7. Depths of the Alcazar (part 1 of 4)

There is one piece of advice that has been known since before we as mankind crawled ourselves from the primordial much which spawned us. One should do their very best to never offend their host. Perhaps best shown in the tale of Lycaon it is all the more important to show etiquette when your host is greater than you. When one's host is a soul drinking daemon styling itself to godhood, it is wise to perhaps be cordial to a small degree.

While I disagreed, it seemed to believe that I broke this fopa. In truth, most daemons just make terrible hosts. For this punishment was the only answer. My treatment at the hands of the neverborn children of She Who Thirsts, is something even now at my age I would never wish to plague another mind with the knowledge of its events in their totality, there is one mortal being who knows my pains and there shall only ever be one. In an effort though to assure the completeness of my tale I shall speak of those events that are needed.

In the Great Ocean, time is an irrelevance. There are no beginnings and there are no ends, everything just is and if it is, then it was forever. If such is true, I pray for the fraction of myself lost to the Nemi forever.

The Nemi was an appropriate name, although that depends on how one defines pleasure. A great deal of it was experienced by its master and jailers. The unwilling inhabitants of the Nemi would, I assure you, be far less inclined to make that assessment. It is a haunted dungeon where the most deprived children of She Who Thirsts took their favorite toys or those who offended their dark lady. In its hallowed halls, all treatment is personal.

I was dragged into one of the Nemi's personal's cells and suspended with a series of, in polite terms, organic chains and shackles that gnawed upon flesh. Hung by my wrists by that Astartes knight with nothing but my thoughts and living shackles slowing trying to at the very least, decide how I tasted. I said nothing when I felt their teeth sink into me, though I howled with indignant rage as he turned away with my blade in hand, I would not have it stolen by a thrice-damned traitor. "Where do you think you are going with my blade, dog?" It was enough to stop the turning warrior, "Tis a little small for you, though I am sure your used to handling small or do you just want to see the blade that will end your pathetic mast…"

The dog had a bite, without its master to tug the leash a swift backhand was my reward before I even finished. Shards of bone, mucus, and raw ichor began to spill from my mouth like a flooding pool. For a time I was struck dumb and silent as my jaw shattered. It hung uselessly, attempts move it only worsened it all. The silver knight left before I was finished spitting blood and shattered bone, though a raspy guttural laugh followed him. How impolite. So I was left with my feet hung perhaps a meter from the floor, swinging gently back and forth as I felt teeth continually digging into me. Not the most riveting of experiences but it was one of the least painful I would come to know. In truth, the experience grew strangely comforting over time at least near the end. You never know what scratches you could never actually reach.

For a time I simply hung there and wondered what was going to to be my fate and looked over my surrounding. The chamber was a sort of charnel house, in more ways than one. The walls themselves were made of the flesh of beings from the palest of voidborn souls to the darkest purple chitin of a creature now long dead to the universe, having last seen before man had climbed his way out of our ancestral cradle of Holy Terra. Each piece had been carefully sewn together with a thin but seemingly endless piece of sinew. The flesh of seemed to shift and move as it wished, soon the marble door I had entered the chamber from was simply gone, consumed by the flesh. The only other thing in the chamber that I could see was a pedestal and bowl, both onyx black and covered in profane runes that glowed with a fuschia hue. Its purpose was unknowable.

My mind struggled to focus on a song. Though I hate to admit it, as my adrenaline began to faded foolish bravery soon began to be extinguished and terror-filled its place. I was truly scared and the little shanties of better times seemed to be my one little respite at that moment. The effort to hum them with a shattered jaw was agonizing. Consciousness was a fairweather friend that moment, coming and going as my mind processed the pain. Pointless to speak much of these moments they were a succession of the same recurring sight, flashes of pain, and broken songs.

I had hardly had the time to notice that my mouth, while still a source of pain, seemed to be in one piece again as I awake a final time. The bowl in the room seeming having filled with a trace of ichor. It was then my oh, so pleasant, caretaker had decided to arrive. The flesh and sinew upon the walls parted ways slowly and from the small gap did the creature slide, the flesh shaking as if it was trying to withdraw away from the greater daemon. I was greeted by a being that was humanoid in form with a long snake-like lower body. It was a creature divided vertically, one-half male and one-half female, both a sickly bruise like a color and baring four arms. Its eyes and mouth although seemed to take after its serpent nature along with a nose that was not more than a pair of slits upon his face. It had been to this neverborn monster I was granted to. I remember it well enough, Nayr'hilon as I would learn it called itself. May whatever Tartarus it has found itself in now grow three magnitudes more hellish, such still would be too kind for that abomination.

The creature took no time to make its way in my direction, it moved with surprising alacrity for a being thrice as large as a normal man at its thickest. It was perhaps at least fifteen meters in length being my best of guesses, though I can not say that I took much time to measure the length of the daemon. It had begun to encircle me as would a carrion bird looking over its newest feast. The sound of its scales grinding against themselves was a deathly irritating pain. The walls of flesh seemed to take my side on this matter as they shook in a likewise pained manner.

The being continued to move slowly around me, inspecting me before coming to rest with its upper body resting in front of my own. It seemed to smile as it reached at me with sharpened nails and tried to grip my face. Filling with insecurity, I made the attempt to pull away, but given my precarious situation, there was very little that could be done. In the end, it snapped its hand forward and grabbed me by my chin, slowly turning me from side to side like one would a piece of meat. To feel so useless is a curse, I was not in control of my body, it was merely a toy for another. Every claw-like finger running across my skin reminded me of this fact.

"Well, well," Nayr'hilon seemed to speak with a pair of voices, one of both its genders, "what do I have here." The beast simply licked its lips with its snake-like tongue, shooting it out across the air, tasting what no normal creature could ever hope to know. "A human... No…." A new ember of enthusiasm seemed to cause the creature to circle around me, It began to laugh broadly and giggle lightly all at once. It continued to taste the air as it moved before stopping as its reptilian eyes focused on the onyx bowl with a predator's lust for the hunt. It shifted its bulk to the pedestal and dipped its hand into the ichor and raise the blood to its mouth. It was violating as I felt the daemon's tongue worm through my veins as it licked desperately at its palm, hook tearing at my insides. How it touched me like intimate lover only curdled my blood.

Nayr'hilon stopped after a mere moment, its upper body flinging back and it crying out with such orgasmic joy. Its body unwinding and slithering across the flesh-bound room, sliding across the walls and ceiling as easily as it did the floor. The laughed and squealed with such joy while the collection of flesh writhed with pain and fear. The creature ended its joyous spree, though it continued to writhe, in front of me once again, grabbing my head and holding me tight, "Mistress has gifted me Aeldari to play with," its breathed out in pleasure.

"Name's Ivan actually," I muttered through pursed lips as the daemon played with my face like I was a babe being toyed with by my mother, far less adorable though to be on the receiving end from a daemon, I can assure. "I am just a simple guardsman, hanging about." the daemon did not seem to appreciate the pun, could not for the life of me tell why.

Sharp nails stab into the flesh of my cheek, like hot brands piercing my skin, and slowly began to drag across my face as slowly as it could while still having visible movement. Biting down on my lip, I tried to stifle the cry of pain that was building in my throat, tried.

Nayr'hilon face twisted into a broken grin, as I howled, cheek flesh being rendered from my body. It felt to the ground and as it did, thin strings of sinew slowly began to shoot out and bind the meaty slice. It was slowly dragged into the meaty walls, a strange. I tried for a moment to say anything and yet my voice seems to die in my throat, being unable to process what I saw. The tiny threads ripping it apart and pull it into its folds. Nayr'hilon was unphased by this, it seemed in many ways as if she has expected it. "Tell me Aeldari what is it that leads you to me," the daemon slowly examined the blood upon its claw, its tongue flicking gently nearby, though it refused to touch the ichor. The want in its miss-matched eyes said showed it took all the beings will to deny itself the pleasure. "My mistress," it continued moments later, "so rarely calls upon me from my playthings and never just for only one." The two-sided being finished with such a curiosity that it almost demanded my answer, for which I was not reluctant to provide.

"I was just holding the line, for it is all that The Emperor asks of us," it was the answer I figured would have irritated the daemon the most, I also could not think of anything better. "Given how far I've gotten, I have to say, I am doing a much better at holding the line than the lot of you." By the look upon its double-sided face, I could only guess that it was beginning to understand why its master might have sent me to it.

The daemon's eye flared with fire for a moment before it sniffed the air and calmed. "It shall be fun to break you," Nayr'hilon brought its clawed hand closer to its mouth and began to lick at its fingers with its long prehensile tongue, wrapping around digit after digit. While I could not touch it or see it, I felt my flesh begin to twist and regrow until my cheek was made once again whole. Flesh writhed and sloughed away, rebelling against the intrusions of the warp, but new skin grew, tendons knit themselves, and the wound fused. The pain went moment after. A short feminine giggle spilled from the lips of Nayr'hilon as she noted the surprise plastering my mind and face, "Oh darling, you did not think my mistress would let you die, did you. Your kind are so protective of their souls, to drink them is a commodity." There was a pregnant pause in the daemon's words that turned my heart cold as the light of understanding began to fall upon me, Nayr'hilon smirked before continuing, "but a soul broken, taken piece by piece, distilled in earthly agony. Know some joy for you will be a domaine for god. Worry not you shan't die, until she tires of you, so we do not keep you fresh."

Nayr'hilon easily ran its hand across my chest piece. A series of slow wet tisks came from the cooing daemon, "now we can not have you all dressed up in this." It grinned for a moment its lips stretching far beyond the normal bounds until it spanned from near ear to ear. It stabbed its clawed finger into my gorget, its hand piercing the metal after a moment. The finest arts of the mechanicum were rendered open with the ease of which one might have opened the seals of ration pack. The sounds itself was not too dissimilar. The artisanship of the mechanicus and the massed woven fibers of my flak vest fell from my frame as if they were nothing. The sinew web springing to life to take hold of its newest pieces to add to their collection.

After that, I was slowly made to understand why it was that She Who thirsts called upon this daemon to be my caretaker.

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Look I did it! Two chapters in a month. Sorry I have not had time to edit these and pump them out faster as I do want to read and work though everything.

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	8. Depths of the Alcazar (part 2 of 4)

As I said once before, my treatment at the hands of the neverborn children of She Who Thirsts, particually my caretaker Nayr'hilon, is something even now I would never wish to plague another soul with the knowledge of the circumstances in their totality. For the sake of completion though, I will share with you some memories. My time under the service of Nayr'hilon passed with no clear measurement of time. I would eventually realize that to try to measure events with the same determinants as one would in the material world is an utterly ridiculous notion. In some ways, I had been in the daemon's cares for what amounted to untold millennia and yet at the same point scarcely moments in the span of my life or the material infinity had actually passed. The only relation to reality I can give is my memories and the time it takes to relate them.

It always began the same way, Nayr'hilon would slither into my prison and probe me like I was some prized possession or a fine cut of meat. It would begin to caress me, the daemon's impossibly sharp nails glided across my skin leaving the tiniest of cuts that stung me and turned my body against the air.

My travails seemed to be fruitless, the more I persisted, the more enthusiasm my daemonic caretaker worked with. Nayr'hilon could work its claws with the precision that no man or even the most sophisticated of machines could match. Tiny cuts, followed by brutal tearing, followed by twisted tools and the daemon's playthings. This all done with a hideous glee no mortal creature could muster, not even in the shadowed halls of Commorragh. When my caretaker was particularly bored, it would cut at my skin and force toxins into my wounds and simply slide back to watch as death and fire coursed through my veins.

I recollect one fateful age as being seared into my consciousness. The daemon gradually, deliberately, and methodically began to shut down my respiratory system with an unusual horrid virulent pollen, aptly named Last Breath. The diminutive flower grew only in three places; the distant death world of Burnscour from which it hales, among the druchi, and in the infernal gardens of She Who Thirst for which no hideous flora could not be found. My caretaker brought me a bundle of the precarious little flower, setting them in the tattered remains of my fatigues, for Nayr'hilon thought I looked drab and needed color. By the time the realization of what these infernal beings produced, it was too late to attempt to hold my breath. Every breath grew more difficult than the last, my chest growing inflamed as it begged for depleting oxygen. My limbs quickly deadening as my heart struggled more and more to pump life rich vitae through my veins as my body demanded ever further work to sustain itself. The whipping of my heart began to ring in my ears. The rhythmic pumping drumming in my head causing it spin and buzz. My body screamed at me to grant it air though no matter how hard I struggled my lungs refused to fill, as my mind was charged with terror as I felt life edge away from me but could not muster the power to stop it. Suffocation is a horrifying death, one which was denied to me. Soon the last bits of oxygen was gone from my blood, my body simply shut down as my heart slowed to one final beat and conscious withered to almost total unconsciousness. Neither would come, the foul sorcery of this realm holding me in a stasis.

Trapped in my single last heartbeat that was dragged out for seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years, decades, and centuries. Being just aware enough to feel my heart, and know the internal decay that my body was trapped in, aware enough to feel my body burning without air. My body left aware enough to feel the cadre of daemonettes 'playing' with me. They twisted and tore my flesh, turning deep violet blood once again crimson. All this while my dear caretaker spewed its newest ideas for my torture into a mind barely able to keep itself alive let alone register the world around it. To this day I can't remember what was whispered to me, only the horrible rapture that twisted my body.

My only freedoms from the daemon were those moments were few and far between. One of the few graces was that the demonic children of Slaanesh are fickle beasts and easily bored even with their own excess. Thus while my tortures were increasingly inventive, methods of punishment. It also meant that Nayr'hilon would soon enough tire of me and slide off into the abyss beyond my chambers to return to its private collection to find some new toy. These, small moments, were the shortest of my breaks. I did not use these moments idly. Hanging there I planned and waited for my torturer to return. There were but a few inevitable hurdles that I had to overcome. The first was to break free from my binding. The most prominent, and second issue, was the location of my blade. It was one of the few things I was aware of at the time, that could so easily scar and kill one of these warp born monstrosities. I knew well enough that if I was to have any chance of ending my torment I would need the blade. I also would not allow my heritage to be disparaged in the possession of these painted creatures, pretending to be gods, not at least while I still drew breath. The third hurdle would prove to infinitely more complicated as even if I could escape from this degenerate chateau, I knew not the realm which I resided in, nor where I would go even if I escaped. It is only by happenstance, the answer to both the later issues would eventually be found from a singular being.

When the great onyx chalice was filled to its brim, with fragments of my spirit, mind, and ichor, though was when I was most free. A daemon once great in power, a griffin-winged man like bull, would come to retrieve that unholy grail and relieve Nayr'hilon of its task. That shattered remains of a creature that men once fear was now little more than a cupbearer, its purpose was the only binding that kept it from fading into irrelevance. The monster would often look at me with what I could only assume was pity. While I could not think of what that figment of a dead faith thought of me, I was nevertheless grateful for that fact. The daemons would deliver that profane chalice filled with the newest vintage of my mortality for the Lord of Excess to consume, the Prince of Pleasures to imbibe upon and I was left there helpless, still hanging, as I could feel shreds of myself utterly destroyed as She Who Thirsts guzzled away shards of my soul and pain.

This long wait was one of the worst of the tortures though. The pain that was inflicted upon my mortal frame was something that words do not exist to adequately describe, of that I would never deny, but as I hung there in those moments of peace the earthly pain would numb. My body laid shattered a million, million times and yet it would in time reconstitute itself, despite the innumerable crystalline wishes that streamed down my face. The pain was nothing compared to the torture of my mind in these moments, for while there are often many descriptions for the atrocities others inflict on us, there are no words for the terrors that we inflict on ourselves. I was a strong lad, I could survive my body wanting die, for I had two out there who the sight of was worth anything that could be done to my corporal form, but the spirit and mind are not so resilient.

The places the mind wanders to when left alone to contemplate its own mortality and one's own finality can be a horror greater than any torture that could be inflicted upon the body. I was left hanging alone with not by my thoughts and the echoing silence. In the levity, my mind crossed this daemon-infested miasma and broke through the bulwark that divided the abyss of an existence back into the wondrous finality of the material plane. I would cross the surfaces of endless worlds beneath endless stars but always land upon the well-trodden stones of my homeland, the Haven of Volk. From there I would walk the metal and ore of the minus of Hive-city Secundus. Calloused feet walking pathways centuries old, the deep veins of Volkite illuminating me in red. For but a moment, my blood was washed away in the ichor of my home.

The mines were full as always, full of millions of souls who were nameless to me as I was to them. As I moved about them and to them I was invisible. "Emperor preserves me," were the only words that I could manage as I past unseen in front of the glowing blood crimson eyes of an adept, waving a hand in front of its face. It just continued down its path as if were nothing. I continued this through the mines making my way ever closer to the worker's lifts which lead to the hive city proper. No one noticed the phantom that walked among them. after what felt like a decade of walking past vacant-eyed workers with tied, hopeless, stares and just hummed their working songs. Attempts to get attention proved fruitless, speaking, grabbing, shaking them did nothing, all I could do was continue onward. My legs were groaning me as I neared the miners lift. Soon enough I was screaming,"damn you to the pits of hell!" My fist bashing on the plasteel lift door which shook gentle no matter how hard I pulled at them or bashed at the lift button it would not open. All I could do is slump down against metal doors and watch the nexus of the mine and stare out vacantly at all the souls that worked like a perfect machine before me. It made me wonder at my irrelevance.

How many would remember me, for all those who know me, I to them was destined to fade away. To be not but a few dozen shift logs lost in the vast data archives of the Adeptus Mechanicus. To the likes of the Administrium or the Imperial Guard, I would be a small record that in all likelihood would be censored as the records of my grandfather and great great grandfather. I would be some blacked out record, forgotten by the ungrateful! Forgotten by those who knew that it was better for the Imperium that for a time I was forgotten.

It was sobering to concluded that there were so few in the whole of humanity for which my death, or supposed death, they would know and even fewer of which it would be of any import. Those who rested so from me now, in the depths of space and in the deep catacombs and spires of the hive cities. If I could have called up to them I would have, but such a thing would have been useless as the sound died in my throat. All that be done was look over those faces about the mine, those who knew me, those who know me not, and I could only wonder how long it would be until I was forgotten.

Who lives? Who dies? Who tells your story? They are questions beyond the control of mortal hands. We merely have to struggle to make those few turns of our hourglasses worth it. To do everything like we are running out of time and hope we are worthy of remembrance. There was an old Terran saying that I had once been told and did not truly understand it until then as I wondering at the mark I had made. No one is actually dead until the ripples they cause in the world die away. That man was a genius I thought as I hung there waiting and wondering how long until I was actually dead, it seemed far worse than death.

Yet, I could only watch as to the land of my birth as I was forgotten, as I bellowed until my throat was raw. No matter how hard I beseeched them just to be heard or seen, none of them looked at me as I was not there. I was never really there, as much as a wished it otherwise. I was in a cell, hanging from my wrists, screaming alone to myself, eyes burning with tears and begging those who know nothing of me, to remember me. Terror struck at my mind, not of the torture of daemons, but the fear that one day no one would say my name and I would be gone.

It was not long till I begged for my erstwhile caretaker to return for that brief moment of horrid companionship. All the more though, these moments kindled my ambition to be freed of this Emperor-forsaken realm. I would not be forgotten and so I planned.

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Sorry for the lack of action, in this one and that it is mostly him thinking to himself. More will come soon. Thank you Slimjim77 for the comment.

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	9. Depths of the Alcazar (Part 3 of 4)

My plans were never the most complex of things, to call them plans at all is a practice in exaggeration at its finest. Getting out of this chateau of horrid pleasures presented a number of problems equal only to its horrors. Where that silver knight had taken my blade and how to be free of this chamber and my daemonic caretaker. While in the end, I was not the one to find it, I must give some context to the events that would later transpire.

"So what are you feeling for today, my little one," Nayr'hilon asked with a smile as my teeth clenched at the daemon's informal even motherly tone just to annoy me. Nayr'hilon was growing bored of watching the heretic fork thrusting into the bottom of my mouth and neck, a cloak of spikes was wrapped about me. "I just don't know what mood I am in," The minuscule metal spikes floated just off of my skin, impaling the ends of my nerves from every direction from the tiniest of movements, toxin coating leaving me swimming in a sea of liquid flame. It was a pain that would have utterly shattered the mind of most men, to mean it was just another day that I suffered, a pain I was growing used to. All the while I was forced to keep my chin up and smiling lest the fork skewer me again. Whenever I managed to calm my movements Nayr'hilon would swat me about with its tail only to sigh at my agonized bloody retching "come now why must your kind be so resistant."

While it was never proactive in our conversation I asked a question that was so common on my lips now. The words were simple, "Wheres my sword?"

Nayr'hilon although did not take kindly to the question, it had grown boring to the daemon. "To think I prepare so much for you and all the boy can think of is his little toy," it growled removing the heretic fork just to wrap her fingers about my throat, its nail slowly cutting open my throat.

"By the throne…" I groaned as I felt my throat begin to open

Its snake-like eyes narrowed and leered at me with a hunger that it only had when it had prepared some new instrument which it had the wish to test my resolve against.

The act was perhaps fueled from spite or annoyance, Nayr'hilon stopped its claw while my flesh and bone regrew, leaving its claw scratching the back of my throat. "It seems you need to remember you are never going to leave this place, so I shall make it clear," claw cut deeply into flesh that day. I still feel a phantom pain in my right leg and throat, with the barest of pressure applied, to this day from my caretaker's service that day as my body opened and spread out like an angel.

I don't know what caused it to stop, but eventually, Nayr'hilon looked about as if it was trying to feel a difference in the world about it. There was an air of distaste that flickered across its face, like one who smelled decay and rot, that I could not sense. The moment passed and then it turned its serpent eyes upon me. The daemon seemed to be inspecting me up and down and back again. "Why do you want your toy child," the being snapped at me, the entire chamber seemed to shake at its master's rage.

"I just wanted to know... so I can show you pansy feths how the guard has fun," hacking up a mixture of phlegm and spittle onto Nayr'hilon to punctuate my words. Despite my words, I could not raise my head to look up at the daemon and could feel its unnatural black eyes staring down at me as one might view a misbehaving child. I felt a soft feminine hand raise up my chin, forcing me to look upon the beast.

"Adorable," that was the only world the daemon spoke before she continued tearing at my flesh until my mind went black. It was perhaps the best sleep I had since my internment in this horrid realm. only to awaken some time later. Alone once again.

In that semi-lucid realm between sleep and awareness, I hung for an inordinate amount of time. All I could do is mumble prayers, their words half memory half rambling "I call to you... my Emperor, protector of man... The life... was given to us by you. Protect me... Fathers of my father I... ask for your protection, for I need you." every few words came between fountains of ichor and screams to the jeering laughter of my caretaker.

oooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

When I finally awoke I found myself once again abandoned. After that particularly strenuous flaying with Nayr'hilon, I could only guess that I had fallen out of consciousness for some time and my horrid caretaker had been unable to revive me or simply had not cared enough to. It would not be remotely surprising if my lack of response would have dulled the daemon's enjoyment.

It seemed to only have abandoned me but moments before though as several wounds were still being sewn together once again, strings of flesh whipping free from my body and entwining with one another like coiling serpents. I found myself slowly singing back and forth like a pendulum, watching the fleshy and sinewy surrounding of the room, shift about me. It seemed to move in perfect time with an invisible metronome. Desperation or perhaps hope spurred me on to action, this world was a strange place so I prayed this worked and began to swing my feet. Such was not an easy task given my position and yet I slowly began to kick my legs forward and then pulled them back, doing my best to tuck them back behind me. The fangs of my chains stabbed and slid about in my flesh, but I let the pain come if it was the price I had to do pay so I could be free. I would pay it gladly.

My actions brought little moment at first, but when one has an endless eternity trapped in a single moment, time is as important as it is irrelevant. With every swing, I grew closer to the wall behind me, with every moment I felt some tinge at the back of my head telling me to stop. So easily I could be discovered it yelled. I had no plan it argued. My fear would overtake me it warned. It was not wrong in any account and they were to inflict every conceivable torture upon my body if I stayed, the chance to hold my Marya and watch my victor grow into a man was worth any risk so my bets were hedged. The room seemed to writhe with my every swing, the sinew shifting across the floors and walls. Hope for what might happen when I actually made contact with the wall slowly rose, as it seemed to latch onto anything but it's demonic masters and if it had been flesh it would be restored to its owner. What would happen if and when the sinew grabbed a hold of me, was purely up to the runes of fate and the will of laughing gods.

Blood rolled down my arms as my flesh was tearing, long tears forming from the constant shifts up and down, and soon enough I was greeted with the feeling of my bone being ground against the teeth of the shackles.

My jaw clenched tighter and tighter as I moved in a full swing now, launching forward and having a single weightless moment before swinging back, tucking my legs and gaining as much speed as I could. In those brief moments of weightlessness, I shifted my weight early, letting my shackles move up my arm so that when I fell the teeth were sent tearing up my flesh. The teeth cut higher up in my arm. Bones cracked and muscles tore, the pain always seemed as if it was there for the first time and while the flesh would begin to reknit itself over time as the claws worked their way ever higher along my hands.

Even as my swing grew evermore pronounced, a sudden thought struck me. What if perhaps my jailer came only to find me in my attempt or worse, found me free from this chain and yet still trapped in the chamber. Getting caught attempting to escape, but not managing it, might be written off as one's hopes getting the better of themselves. Actually succeeding could bring a new level of one ire down upon me that I doubted would have my caretakers be as accommodating they have been, at least in their own perverse nature.

It had been that rare moment that I considered deeply ramifications if I was not able to succeed. Like the now all but lost heroes of yore, that provided the near sum total of ancient Boeotia's mythology, I must admit that hubris was perhaps one of my greater follies in youth. When in reality much of my accomplishments were likely I mix of allies, a bit of sense, the stupidity of luck, and the courage that the inability to realize in the totality of my situation provided. It was once said, for courage can make a virtue of inexperience. Many have achieved great things because they were too inexperienced to realize that their goal was impossible.

A sudden jolt though freed me from the worry of what could to happen, as I began another swing forward. I felt the deep claws tearing at the bones in my hand as they shifted and cracked. My carpal bones splintered and their shards thrust through my skin like shrapnel. It would not stop me though, growing ever closer to what I hoped would be my freedom. The teeth reflexively snapped down upon me like it knew what I was planning and was trying to stop me. It is not an unbelievable notion that my chains to some degree sentient. Nevertheless, I continue my endeavor and damned these chains trying to stop me. Despite them, and to spite them, I was growing ever closer to the back wall.

Some part of me figured I would only need a few more good swings before I was close enough to the sinew to latch onto my feet. They were shifting madly in my peripheral, trying to snatch at my flesh. The feeling of my hands being ripped free through the spikes was maddening, for such an act would forever cripple a man elsewhere, but the prison was to be my savior in this case. I did my best to keep my breathing steady and ready for what was to come. A slow inhale through the nose as a swung back and large exhales as I swung forward, all to calm my ever increasing heartbeat.

With each backswing, my feet grew ever closer, and closer, the sinews' tendrils slowly rising out of the muscle fibered walls. A swarm of insect hoping to capture some prey larger than them and pull them into their hive. Still closer I grew until I felt one of the thin attempt to grasp at my feet but fail, it was close though. With for another swing, one of them managed to wrap about my ankle, like the spindly fingers of death, but they snapped at the first bit of force from my forward swing. It, unfortunately, was just enough to stifle my momentum, nearly breaking the rhythmic motions which I had established and forced me into another few dozen swings just to regain what I had lost. When I had finally grown close enough again, the sinew snapped at me until like before a few tendrils wrapped about my pressed together feet. For but a moment they held, the sudden jerk of my body stopping snapped the fibers and jerked my chains with a force that was unmatched by my simple swings. Their teeth ripped their way through my hands. I was screaming before I knew I was falling.

No attempt was made to break my fall. Even if I had anticipated the sudden stop, I could see no manner in which to do it with flayed hands. All I could do what shift my weight in one direction and let my side take most of the impact. It certainly was not the most pleasant course of action, but it was what was made available to me. My body struck the ground with a single bounce, the sudden feeling of a snap roll through my body. If I had to guess it would have been two or three of my rib near my lower abdomen cracking and being dislodged. None of my organs felt as if they had been punctured though, so the small blessings were counted for what they were.

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Yeah sorry, I have been out of it, but life and college man it takes up time. Hope you and more will come soon... maybe.

Why not check out my other stories on my FF or FP of the same name. I got some other Warhammer stories

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	10. Depths of the Alcazar (part 4 of 4)

Not that there was a particularly long time to count those blessings, as the quick creeping tendrils snapped about me like the ropes and spears of feral man trying to bring down a behemoth. Had my hands been anything more than raw slabs of torn and shredded fat, muscle, and bone, any resistance I could have put up might have been worth something. Unfortunately, they couldn't have sewn themselves back together fast enough if they had been nearly as eager to not die as their owner. Now doing all he could to not do so. The fleshy vines and folds slowly tugged me into their strange bosom, pulling me into a cold moist embrace. My final action, before I was pulled under, was to curse the name of my captor as I fell into an inky darkness.

The darkness' existence still frightens me, for it was not the flesh or ichor. I could see the faces in the abyss, the very foundation of the Dark Prince's realm, the endless souls that had been consumed by the monsters that swore allegiance to She Who Thirsts. In escaping my chains I threw myself into the abyss. A thought I did not take lightly as I began to sink into an oily darkness, a billion-billion souls crying out to me as a spark of life they had forgotten, unsure of what was about to become of me. I had made a gamble, one that even Jack Kent would have doubted the devil's hand for. Now, whether I wished to comprehend the end or not, I had little choice but to see it through. It felt like I was sinking at first, into a mire thicker than the worst heaps of grease and gunk that would form on the Mechanicum's transcendent engines. I simply let myself sink to the silence of this xenological sea of pneuma.

In that moment of inanimateness, I was trapped, nothing seemed real in the blackness. It was strange to know oneself as I did at that moment. I could feel each and every individual molecule of my body having the souls endless dead passing over them. In the horror frozen faces, I could see their lives reflected in their eyes. Endless lifetimes playing out before me from the view of those who witnessed them each ending in this realm of the subconscious. I floated farther into the darkness with each and every moment, wondering if I am how long until I was just another screaming face in the darkness.

A flicker of a halcyon light soon cut through the darkness. If I had not been in this realm, I might have likely ignored it as an optical phenomenon. With a brief renewal of effort, I attempted to swim through the oil and mire of the world about me. It was slow and prodding, but the light grew closer with each and every swing of my arms. If I was to describe it though, it was like floating through the void of space as if all but a single star had gone out, no matter how hard one struggled you would only move so fast and you only had so much control of yourself, which amounted to near nothing.

My hand barely graced the light when I find myself once again in my cell, floating just off the floor. I looked down at the sown flesh floor and the sinew which could not seem to grab me. I tried to set my hands against it and found my twisting fleshy hands upon a barrier which I could not see and felt like nothing and yet it was there, "by The Throne of Terra." The words came like a whisper, I thought none would hear them. I was not sure if I was actually dead or not, given that I would be in this same hell I was unsure how much it might have actually mattered.

"The throne of man shines bright, but its light shines not here," the words were ethereal and almost ghostly at first but there was a strength behind it. I pushed my head up to look at a figure most odd.. The man was dressed in a skin-tight leotard with a diamond pattern adorned in colors of a black as obsidian, a purple most authoritative, and a gold as if the metal had been heated till it was molten. "Welcome wanderer child. My master sends his regards," as if to accent his words the man gave a full body wave of the hand. The figure's face was obscured by a mask that showed extreme happiness in the greatest of exaggerations. The mask was made of porcelain with gold painted lips. The eyes were surrounded by decorative plates of a reddish purple and onyx black. It's eyes we an ever-changing kaleidoscope rift of color. His long purple dyed hair was pulled into a horsetail, though it spread out like a peacock at the top of his head. He was not this dissimilar to the jesters that once entertained the courts of now long dead nobility in Terran antiquity if not for the greatly armored duster that hung upon his shoulders. A cloud of crystal shards slowly danced and swirled around him with the same vigor as his movement, as he stood they were slow even unmoving but as he waved a hand they spun about and interweaving between his fingers.

Starring up to the figure dressed in onyx and gold, standing so tall above me, I watched as he kept in constant motion from subtle shifts of weight which at first might have seemed like balance keeping, but the keener eye could see the dance beneath it all. "You're a clown?" That was all the great Machiavellian skill I could muster to pose my question. To be honest it was all I could manage in my stupor and confusion. To my credit at the time though, he did appear as a clown.

The harlequin only shook his head, its face never wavering from its joyous smile. The clown choosing to wag a finger in my direction, "I am one who dances, the dance of the Great Jester. One who laughs with the God of Grins" The figure gave the most verbose of bows one could give, though he moved with such an unnatural grace that it looked like nothing.

"You don't say, good for you then," I muttered, rolling my eyes, as I began to push myself up from the nonexistent floor. Trust in me when I say it is better to not think of such oddities for long. After a few moments, I found myself face to face with the harlequin. The Great Jester, the term was familiar, something screaming in the back of my head, trying to tell me something and yet the more I tried to grasp at it, the quicker it faded from me. I attempted to brush my armor only to have forgotten that long ago most had been lost to me, the Aquila ring upon my finger was the only metal that still touched my flesh, how I managed to stay on I couldn't say. "I have personally had more than enough interaction with beings that claim that they are servants of god's if it is all the same to you, " I would stop bushing myself before continuing, "no offense." My eyes though stopped I took him in, and the pointed ears slipping free from his mask, "that is unless you're the cavalry for me?" It had not been exactly what I had been expecting. An Eldar dressed in such a way that his every movement gave one an eyesore from the endless stream of colors and flashing lights had not been the knight in shining armor that I have come to think of might save me. Not that I was opposed to the idea. No in all truth my heart began to flutter, Emperor bless the bastard if I was to be free.

The harlequin gave an audible sigh, "The blood of the Mon-keigh flows like a fire most strong in your veins," I thought for a moment to raise an argument to this statement as it sounded more than vaguely as in insult. It was not a wrong statement it was just the tone. The masked face seemed to look upon me and while it did not move, the smile seemed to grow smaller and the joy seemed to fade. I knew something was wrong even before the golden harlequin began to speak again, "Your's is a wandering soul, neither Aledari nor Mon-keigh. To this your soul belongs to many players and yet none hold sole claim so must you dance to their tunes. From this realm though, I can free you no…" I swung at the jester before the pansy git could speak another word. While I had no idea what I had been expecting much at that time, that moment I felt as if I had been sentenced again to the damnation about me. I didn't even see the Eldar move before he stood at my side, my fist impacting on air, I swung at him again with similar results. My third punch the harlequin did not attempt to evade and I felt his silken hand's holding my fist as one might have stopped a child. "Are you done?"

Ignoring his question I stared into those eyes ever changing in color and asked, "if I can not leave this place then why come for me it all, could have left me in the darkness for all the help you are gonna be." Blood was boiling as I looked at him.

The harlequin twisted my arm, till my arm was about to pop out of its socket, swearing at me, "Ceiba-ny-shak", which proper sensibilities and limitations of language forbid me from explaining.

"Speak Gothic you pansy git," I spat with a grin to ignore the pain, "or I'll make you."

If my words got any rise out of him it did not show, his breathing slowed after a few moments and the calm returning, "slavhreenur is not beyond you. By acts and rites now ancient, by the grace of a deathless raven, a bulwark rests about your soul to preserve it from the darkness of this other realm. If you wish to see you home again," I stopped my struggling as I heard those words, there was a chance that I could see Vulk again it seemed like a lie, a lie I wanted to believe, "travel this sunless sea to find a land where the twin worlds touch if you ever to break the bounds of the boundless world. While I may not create the inferno I can help, the first of the kindling I can provide."

The words did not seem real even as the passed from my lips,"you mean I could get out of the warp." As jumbled as most eldar speech was when they were trying to bestow knowledge upon others that much was certainly clear enough, there was an unmistakable smugness in words that made it clear to a good ear. The nameless figure twisting my arm was not doing much to actually improve my mood, but blessed was an apt feeling. The news sparked a small kindle of hope in my chest, my word came with a hunger "how?"

The harlequin only nodded in response, the grin on his mask seeming to grow ever wider without actually moving, "your souls holds true in a land where nothing is true. It is one of the many gifts of flesh and yet is also a curse in this ocean of our universe's base instincts and rawest emotions. The creatures of the shroud are limited only by the choice and the nightmares of their baleful Promethei. If you are willing to dance the Dance of Death and walk the thousand twisting paths of fate. You may see the freedom that you wish. "

I could not help myself a small chuckle, by the Emperor, there's a chance, even if it were a gamble that no sane man would ever take, there was one."If it's all the same to you that dancing has never been my strong suit, and at the moment I don't exactly have a partner, unless your volunteering, I prefer something a bit less alive." I figured that the Harlequin would understand his kind always seem to, I did not know how I would survive ten minutes in this realm out of this cell let alone without a weapon.

My words did not even see to phase, he simply shook his head, "slavhreenur is closer than you believe, tied to your blood. May its light guide the way to your in it, it will find its way to you as it did before, as the hound returns to its master and guards his hearth heart. So it shall be. May its light guide the way to your enemies." The harlequin set out his hands as one might if they were to receive something and nodded at me, instructing me to follow suit. "If I may," I watched as the silken hands drew back and their master sat them upon my head. They were the softest touch and yet they were so familiar. The Eldar let his two fingers fall down upon my eyes. His voice seemed different now it sounded like an old man who was reliving memories and wishing for a better day, "Two hands I may offer you on this pack waywalker. First, look for the shadow lost in darkness. There is a silence which wishes only to scream for its freedom, lost in this archive of our great enemy. You will find one who might share in your burden. You must ask without speaking the name true to its soul and with that bind it. Know that your song is not alone, many play its tune, you must simply find them. In my second hand, Cailingloic'shelwe"

The harlequin pulled away his hands a moment later, and as my eyes begin to open, I called out, "who are you?" The question was meaningless as I found that he had since vanished, and a familiar weight was set in my hands. Looking down I saw the emerald green metal with a mix of golden runecraft and finely written in the flowing script of High Gothic. It read a single name, Yorke. If I was to tell you that I understood how my blade got to me then I would have been lying, it would have been many mortal years before I ever truly understood the events that just transpired.

A single silent thanks passed from my lips to the nameless harlequin, that took me from that black cerulean flame of the blade roaring to life ever brighter as my hands wrapped around the hilt. With a prayer on my lips, the blade was plunged into the fleshy mass, which withered and writhed. A bloody ooze poured from the fresh scar. The blood of a dozen species pouring down into a collective pool that looked more like a collective oily sludge than a dozen metallic bloods as I pushed myself into the wall.

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Wow, I managed two in two weeks... I just wanted to get this out before focusing on some midterms. Thanks for the favorite fixerbacta.

Why not check out my other stories on my FF or FP of the same name.m

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	11. Silent Souls in Shadow (part 1)

The halls of the Nemi were works of the strangest art, to say the least. Wrought from qantities of marble into mosaic floors. There were numerous stone doorways along the wall, each one holding a mosaic picture upon it. I would have called them beautiful, if not for the art which showed depictions of daemons 'playing' with mortals. Their games, however, in their grotesque fashions, were not something that most would enjoy or survive. The walls lacked much of the beauty of the doors, they were little more than flesh and bone, a thin transparent ooze leaking off of the meaty walls. I did my best to ignore and avoid the few times that it dripped down from the ceiling. The entire Hall was filled with light that lit the room utterly, leaving no shadow the eye could see, and yet there were no torches or glow globes. The room seemed to be entirely lit by free moving transient light that rolled in small ethereal wisps.

I do not recall walking out from the door to my chamber, I had merely pushed myself through the bleeding wounds in the piles of flesh and found myself standing out into the open hall. The mosaic upon my door was that of a skeleton. Its upper half was stripped of flesh and yet even in the image the flesh seem to twist and grow anew so at no two moments was the image ever the same. The skeleton seems to be crying out as if it had wished for death and it had been denied that simple peace. A cold chill ran down my spine as I looked into its eyes. There was a pain in them which could not be created by a normal artisan, it was as if a soul were trapped in the stones and it what was showing my the horror that it was going through. Above the skeletal figure was the image of She Who Thirsts or at least a depiction of the dark god, she was roaring at the pain. The laugh was one of absolute hysteria and as I looked into the dark prince's eyes I felt a wave of natural force that rolled down my spine and dropped like a smith's hammer upon the anvil at the pit of my stomach. I found it hard at first to look away as if it was drawing me in again, those hungering eyes wanting me to return. Turning away far more difficult than it should have been as I drove my blade across its image and began to walk the halls.

It felt as if I were walking a maze, the halls seemed to shift and turn with my every step. I could look behind myself a dozen times only to find each time that what I saw before was gone. Finding the way out of this dungeon would prove to be far harder than I had initially anticipated. The halls seemed empty though I could hear the sound of untold masses always around the next corner engaging in their excesses only to find nothing as I reached the intersection.

That is not to say that I saw nothing, for it was more than once that I had to dive back around a corner to avoid being seen by creatures of such hideous and seductive natures bound in perfect union. Most of them, to be brief, were humanoid with the mix of snake and crustacean. More than once I bore witness to demons that defied description in their utter maniacal forms. Still, they strain my will to recall. The dread and disgust that welled up from my feet and caught in my throat, is all I dare repeat of them. My search for a set of stairs was a little more than a reliance on luck, which was even more quickly proving to be folly.

In time, I gave up looking for a passage out of the Nemi, so lost was I, and began my search for that 'the shadow lost in darkness' whatever that actually meant. That was always the problem with my fellow kindred. So rarely do they speak in terms without metaphor that applied only to their our own understanding. There were many doors that depicted beings of Shadows and numerous other demons and xenos swaddled in fiery and hate-filled although felt as it fit the description of a shadow lost in darkness. Nevertheless,s I followed these doors hoping that they might lead me to the way I wish. In some respect, all that could be done was to wander and hope the door would find its way to me. In a land of desires, a hope seemed to be a fitting torch.

The prison seemed to be fighting me in all my attempts to break free. To keep track of where I had once been, I began to look at the many mosaics which lined the walls next to me to see if I would ever past the same one twice. Which proved fruitless. That was not to say that somewhere not similar, in fact, there were differences so insignificant that they were at times impossible to tell the difference between. There had been an endlessly vast hall for which every door depicted a single man pinned to a rock with a sword of great length. As I passed through the hallway I noted that the first sword had been a garish orange that hurt the eyes to look upon, by the time I had reached the end, however, the blade had been one of the most majestic dark blues that one's eyes might bear witness to and for all my time in this hall I cannot recall a single point where this ever repeating image had changed color in the slightest. At other halls, the doors were so vastly different to so much as to find a similarity between them would have been a challenge for even than the most pedantic of scribes to take note of and likely only after he had gone insane from the process.

As I continued in this labyrinthine subterranean network of paths and passages I found myself at a fork in the hall. One hall was really empty, many of its doorways were, in fact, blank as if to suggest that they were newer. The other side continued on the same, with the continual shifting prisons and their tortures. My mind told me to follow the older path as I reached a fork in the path, and began to wander down its way. I felt my blade and curiosity push at me, however, they urged me to go the other way. I found a slow dread being born in my mind, something was telling me to go back, just stay away, and yet I persisted believing well enough that in the warp that not all that one could not always rely on their senses for reality. I focused my mind for a moment if I were to find something that did want to be found or that others did not wish me to find. It made sense to look in the place I did not want to look.

The deeper I got the more I desired nothing more than to turn about, yet I walked the empty hall, keeping a tight grip on my blade lest I meet one of this prison's wondering wardens. The hall seemed to stretch on and on, with each and every step that I found myself looking back at the distance I had traveled, only to have been found it far shorter than I recalled walking. This did a great deal to stifle any sense of progress, though I continued to push on and on. That was until I reached the end of it all, where even the ethereal lights did not travel.

The final door of the hallway was barren in comparison to many of the other doors of the Nemi but it was not bare. It was a simple black plane with nothing more than a diamond in the center on it. A diamond which seemed to move unnaturally. It was a deep wondrous color that seemed to be shifting ever slowly. I loosened my grip and moved from a slow measured pace to something a bit quicker, moving enough that my footsteps should have echoed on the stone floor, however, produced no more sound than had I been a most precarious mouse scuttering across a church. As if I could not have been more than one wondering in a maze. If I could have called upon this at my will in my younger days, there was a number of troubles that I could have actually gotten away with. I shook the thought from my head after a moment of reminiscing, it was something to think about at another day. Having gotten closer to the stone door I saw what was actually moving on the diamond, or rather in it. It was not a solid image, but a liquid or moved like liquid floating without the barest sense of gravity. It was a deep purple for the moment and as I peered into it, I saw the barest sparkles of white light flash for moments so instant a dozen would pass in a blink. To the natural eye, they would have nearly been nearly impossible to actually see without focus in the dark. The liquid mass was beautiful as I watched the lights like a tiny candle with a short life blown out only to be replaced by billions more. The lifetimes of endless stars playing out before in a matter of moments. I thought of a little tiny ditty about them and gently began to hum the tune as I approached the door.

My hand gently graced the liquid Starlight. It was certainly a unique feeling, all about my hand was the coldest of voids, cold to the point that it was burning, and every other moment there were these brief moments of warmth to ward away the chill. "In the darkest night, the light may fade and yet it shall always find a way to be born anew," I whispered in musing in the thought of a poem I could write, only to find my voice distant and almost completely faded. While my interest had been captured by this mix of liquid starlight. I eventually drew away my hand cupping just a bit with me and pulling it from the abyss. Where it took the form of a simple orb in my hand, it seemed to shake and dance with the dulcet tones that I was humming. After a moment, I set it upon the floor to reclaim later and turned my attention back to the door which stood quietly in front of me, "are you the shadow hiding among the darkness? What by the throne of Terra itself are you holding?" A question for which the door was not very forthcoming, which in my service is more surprising than one might think.

After giving the stone a quick once-over, I gave a few rasps with the back of my hand and knuckles, not entirely sure what I was hoping for in response. The act proved unwise though as it had a hard and terrible touch like a cold fire. There was no sound to my action as if it had been strangled to death by uncaring hands. Pushing on the door proved more pain-inducing only to see it not budge. In annoyance, I braced my shoulder against the polished stone and began to push against the black mosaic door. The cold flame cutting through my shoulder like waves eroding a dune, yet I bit my lip and suffered. Getting ready to push in the door, I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and begin to count. One, two, three, and a moment later the bulk of my weight rolled back and then slammed into the door like a sudden hammer fall. It did not so much as move. Again. One, two, three, I drew back all of my weight even taking a few steps back and then shoulder-charged back into the door. It shifted this time, just a bit. It was not enough to get my blade into the crack. I took a good few steps back, making sure that I kept my sight on where it had shifted. One, two, three, my weight slammed into the door with the force of the best charge that I could muster. Like a great frost the cold burrowed through my shoulder and stabbed like a knife through my blood and yet the stone began to move forward. Digging in my heel I slowly pushed the door open as the blood in my arm froze.

In there laid a vault of darkness, a single fractal of space for which light simply could not exist. The darkness slowly began to spill out across the floor turning the polished floors into nothing, consuming everything touched. It did not seem to belong in this realm, as anathema to understanding as this realm was, the darkness did not belong here. When it touched my skin I felt both terrified and comforted while its chill burned at my flesh, ignoring the feeling I looked into the cell. In the shadows rested a floating stone just like the one upon the door, one made of the night sky.

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And end on a cliffhanger on what that is... XD But yeah another chapter. I hope you all liked it. I am currently looking for a beta if someone wants to offer. Lastly, thanks for the comments, fixerbacta and SandSasori.

Why not check out my other stories on my FF or FP of the same name.

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	12. Silent Souls in Shadow (part 2)

If the hallway had been quiet, then the chamber was silence made manifest. So utter was the lack of sound that the beating of my heart and the rush of ichor through my veins played like a symphony in my ears. An unnatural silence that killed everything it touched. With no small degree of skepticism, I wondered at simple gem that the elder harlequin had been hoping for me to find. It did adequately fit the description from what I could guess. I could hardly see how a rather large rock might be my deliverance from this prison, this palace, and this cursed realm, but that was before I saw it.

At first, I thought it was simply the skeleton of a small child, something that for a moment caused a lump to form in my chest. As I took carefully mediated steps forward however, I was able to observe it in greater detail. It was a humanoid skeleton in shape although it was not without a skin of sorts. It was pulled tightly across its fragile frame and charcoal grey in color. Its head was distinctly insect in nature, reminiscent of a now extinct suborder of Terran Vespula that the died off sometime in millennia nineteen, with the exception that it bore only a single eye in the center of its skull. A pair of round light crystal wings, unmoving, rested upon its back. An insect trapped in amber, amber black as night.

I found myself staring at the withered formed encased in this abyssal stone, it was almost sad. A neverborn warp spawn it might have been, but I had in that found myself sympathetic to those of a more diminished stature than myself. There was something so innocent about them when they looked so weak. I was reminded of the Gretchen Smack-A-Face, a orkoid with a proclivity and predilection for all things potently and powerfully explosive. Intelligent for his kind and a 'procurement' specialist if one ever did truly exist. The most holy Ordos and militarium command allowed for his existence due to the unique services he provided when when fighting greenskins. I had been the one to catch him and he had become one of my trusted companions and strange as it might have been, my only friend. We were the outcasts among a regiment of outcasts, all only allowed to live for the fact we kept returning from suicide missions with the job done. Now, this small creature was trapped before me and I felt a sadness for it. Reaching out a hand to rest against the stone, there seemed to be a stirring in the stone. A roar of power that sent a shiver up my arm. The insect-like creature did not move, but it spoke.

The voice little more than a whisper in my mind, "What watches me… a soul, mortal and weak." There was grogginess to its words, itself like a man that has just been stirred from a restful sleep most unkindly, "speak child of the mortal blood, its been so long since I have known true sound" There was a horrified hunger in its thoughts as if it had been sealed away in this ebony rock, a world that lacked sensation, to the point of insanity and back. I thought to draw my hand away, and yet as soon as the thought passed through my mind as the creature attempted to scream at me, "no, free me, I have been trapped for so long, do not force me into the silence again. Undo my curse, read the binding across my prison and I shall reward thee"

The pain that radiated from its voice struck with a physical weight that pushed the breath from my chest. For a moment I thought to speak, but bit my cheek and held my tongue. Taking a moment to trace my hands across the stone, it had subtle indentations of script that was inhuman in its manner. The words filling my mind as I touched them, Owuzch F'fdae Tzentecta Aerobe-besh Iowooir Salnehian Cmi... My hand stopped, unsure if reading it in my mind would creak the creature like it wanted, and its grown of anger spoke to my being right to so. Leaving my hand upon the stone, I closed my eyes and did my best to try and communicate with it, focusing on what that damn harlequin had told me, demand the name true to its soul if I wanted to be free, I cursed that damn clown for not mentioning how temperamental daemon-kin were about it.

The creature shrieked "NEVER!" as the thought passed from my mind as a wave of pressure. Its declaration came most assuredly and with audible, in lack of a better term, venom. "I will not be freed from one prison just to be forced into the service of a lesser mortal." Biting back an annoyed curse I considered stabbing the spawn. I might be mortal, but I was no less and at least I was free which was more than that little shit could say. I simply waited for its tantrum to end, trying even at one trying to yell at the neverborn to be fething quite only to find my voice silent in this cursed realm. After several minutes of fruitlessly arguing with a creature in which I wished to scream but I could not speak.

In time though it seemed to be growing more desperate in, "mortal, you will die if you do not free me. Give me the sound for which I have denied, do it now... I feel my dark kin closing in" While I thought it was simply deceit I looked behind myself to find that there was nothing. Giving a silent snort, I began to turn back around, trying to find some witty retort, only to find a hand silken in feeling, yet covered in some manner of chitin gripping the back of my throat. Even before as I felt myself being thrown back I could hear a daemon's cackling in my head.

For a moment that midnight shard was filled with such a pain that even as its scream faded from my mind, my heart broke for the being. The pain of being that I once known freedom in its greatest form and then have been deprived of it along with isolation of the barest contact. It knew the deprivation of even its most basic senses in a palace more replete with stimuli than this entire corner of the warp, where stimulation was worshiped.

This followed by much more real pain as I felt my head and back smash against the stone. While normally such would create an audible thump, it was deathly silent in this hallway. The pain, however, was all too real, as subjective as what was real is in the immaterium was. Shadows gathered at the corner of my vision and spots blinded large sections of my vision as my head throbbed, I was barely able to raise my blade stop the razor sharp claws of a demonette from cutting me into little fleshy ribbons. The force like a hammer despite the beings lithe form, its black eyes and lusting breath hitting my face spoke of the creatures want to commence such a ribboning. Having experienced that enough already and doubting I would have the luxury of neither dying or being reconstituted, I was in no mood to incline it. Take not the word of the Ministorum's flagellants, it is preferable to avoid any such treatment.

From what I managed through the shadows of my broken vision the daemon was a broken imitation of man, as much of its misbegotten kind. Its purple skin was pulled tight over its face, with a mouth filled with a thousand needle-like teeth that shone in the darkness as it roared at me in complete and utter silence. While its right hand was normal at first glance, it bulged with muscle. The left hand was not so much a hand as it was a set of long bone like knives bound together by fleshy strings. The rest of its body was misshapen like a water painting by an impatient artist who did wait for his work to dry between layers and colors.

With its initial strike failing, the daemon danced backward in strange and wondrous ballet. It moved with a grace that should not have been afforded by its body, bending and turning in a manner that could not have been managed by any vertebrate. Once again, my foe charged at me in a show of twirls and soundless laughs through needled teeth. I had not yet begun to get onto my feet before I had to try and parry the next blow. Swinging my body to the side, I was able to knock away the strike before it pierced my heart. Nevertheless, the digit blades ran across my shoulder. Pain flared as I wished to scream out but nothing passed from my lips. The daemon once again began to dance back taking the greatest pleasure in its actions.

I heard the quiet buzzing voice in my head again, "You will die mortal, you have not the skill power to kill one of their kind. Free me from his prison and I may aid you" there was a fear in its voice, "do not leave me in this quiet place." I did my best to try to ignore the shard's voice in my head, having two meters tall of spindly death to deal with it. Stopping my roll once I was on my stomach, I could not help but smile. I forced myself forward out into the hall, turning my back to the daemon with an improvised frantic leap like a baby fawn needing to learn how to run at the moment of its birth. "Mortal what are you doing, do not turn your back to it, free me," screamed the voiceless shard as I seemed to abandon it.

My foe was on top of me a moment later, I did not have to hear it to know that. The world seemed to slow as I reached for the ball of frozen starlight. As I caught the orb, I threw my weight to land on my back. The Daemon was above me, it having covered the distance faster than any mortal. Burning cold starlight was thrown with as much force as I could muster as its bladed fingers stabbed into me.

Blades pierced my guts only for my foe wheel back in agony. The thin knife-like fingers pulling free of my flesh as the daemonette tried to wipe away the cold burning void out of its eyes. Taking its confusion and agony to my advantage, I gripped the wrist of the hand that had just impaled me and with as much force as I could muster to violently severe the daemon's relation with its limb.

The limb fell to the ground melting away like one throwing water upon fresh paint. I did not have the luxury of time to appreciate that as I had turned the daemons attention back to me. The beast tried to howl as it jumped on me, slamming its remaining grotesque limb into me with a force that felt like it was trying to pulp me and knocking my blade from me. An inhuman hand wrapping around my neck as the creature lifted me up and slamming me into the inky floor, the blow pushing the air out or my chest and left me gasping, at least until I was slammed into the ground again.

"I offered you help mortal, I can still provide it, please you must simply free me," the words echoed in my head even as I was tossed about like a child's plaything, too stubborn to break. Punches and wild kicks were ineffectual against my assailant, as I used one of my remaining hands to prevent the daemon from simply crushing my throat.

I felt my arms getting weaker the more I fought back, lungs like fire as they cried for every bit of air I managed to get. "I have had many names," the being in the shard whispered, "you may call me, Abl'tl-Thled." I tried to focus my thoughts even as my vision faltered. Blood flooded my insides organs as I tried to keep my thoughts clear, something far from easy in the current situation. I was not going to speak anything until I knew its name, we were either going to both suffer or it would have to trust me. I needed its true name or I would die and he would suffer until another offering to free him would come. Something we both knew would not happen until his suffering had been many times compounded if ever. My hands fell to my throat, soon they would be too weak to fight at all so I scrounged for breath, waiting for the daemon to answer

My vision had gone completely black at this point, my last sight the daemonette feeding greedily on my dying breaths, and then the daemon trapped without sound whispered to me a single name, a name which I have thus promised I shall never share.

That is when a name was whispered to me, a name that I shall never repeat in its entirety for any other being. Many would rightfully never trust a daemon, in all cases they will lie when granting you what it claims is its true name. When a daemon does give its true name though, it is a feeling that can not rightly be described.

The knowledge filled me with unnatural energy, as visions of ancient days flashed into my eyes, thousands of moments across the history of the galaxy filling my mind without context. The very essence of Abl'tl-Thled was mine. In a single moment I was no longer myself, or not only myself, its anima bound mine. It was utterly invigorating that surge of unnatural power, while I still could not break the daemon's grip I did all that I could to lose it enough to speak and take a greedy breath.

For the first time since I had drawn close to this prison I heard true sound as I spoke, "Owuzch Ffdae Tzentecta" the words seemed unnatural at first, as my voice blended with Abl'tl-Thled's "Aerobe-besh Iowooir…." The daemonette seemed to understand what I was doing and I felt its grip growing ever tighter, it could not break my neck in time, "Salnehian Cmiuvak." With the last bit of my air I managed to muster in my lungs I whispered the final syllable and I faded into a state of unconsciousness. The final sound I heard was a roar of fire and a scream most horrid.

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Yeah I know it has been a while but I just finished with college work and had some free time. I am currently looking for a beta if someone wants to offer.

Why not check out my other stories on my FF or FP of the same name.

Please fave, follow, comment, or do whatever you feel the story deserve


	13. Silent Souls in Shadow (part 3)

The next few moments I can recall only pieces in my state of fluttering consciousness. My autosanguine, infused with the sudden influx of immaterial vigor, worked overtime to repair punctured and sliced organs. Despite it being restorative in nature, the unholy fusion of machine and magick obscura turned my blood into the River Phlegethon.

When I first opened my eyes, I saw my daemonic charge, this Abl'tl-Thled, spouting flame at the misbegotten servant of She Who Thirsts. The daemonette roared in the flames, its voice was filled with anger and some perverse form of pleasure as its skin burned away before my vision faltered. The tide had begun to turn when I next found my vision returned. The daemonette knocked Abl'tl-Thled from the air as one might a smaller insect. Abl'tl-Thled bouncing against fossilized bone of the floor not far from me.

Senselessness from blood loss tried to overcome me once again, as I watched that daemonette approach on its cloven feet, giggling with a dark intent. Primal instinct screamed at me not to close my eyes again lest I not wake again. My eyes pulled upwards to see my blade lying among the pool of utter darkness. It's praeternatural flame slowly charring bone and boiling liquid darkness. With great effort I forced my body to move toward my blade, knowing it was perhaps our only deliverance in this realms. Abl'tl-Thled was being held by his skull now and slowly driven down into the floor time and time again by its zealous neverborn kin.

Movement was frantic as I shifted like a maggot that prayed predators were distracted with its kin all, to push myself to my feet. The daemonette laughed at her little toy, goading Abl'tl-Thled to give into the pain he was no doubt experiencing. The Dark Speech is an impossible language with even the same word being different from moment to moment yet I understood it, no doubt from my charges profane gifts burning in my blood. "Lady Slaanesh will be so disappointed that one of her little jewels had to go and break itself," the daemonette cackled with each and every words, slamming the lesser daemon into the ground to punctuate its syllables, "but it is only proper that broken things are disposed of." Bitting my cheek with the effort, I managed to wrap my fingers around my blade, a trail of smearing blood running across the ground behind me. Using my sword as a brace and the walls of the hall, I pushed myself off the ground.

Throwing myself forward, the daemonette was impaled at its shoulder with my single thrust of my blade, ripping flesh across its collar bone. The flames were burning away at its being as the daemonette moved to strike me only to have Abl'tl-Thled threw himself into our foe with renewed vigor, grabbing and clawing at the other neverborn. His claws wrapping around the daemonettes skull which was prompty engulfed in flame.

Abl'tl-Thled sudden attack surprised the daemonette and in all likelihood saved me from a beheading as unnatural claws passed close to my neck. The daemonette however could not say the same as my blade ripped free from it the moment previous, and fell upon its slender neck the next.

Its head fell and rolled away as its body began to dissolve like thinning paint, mixing with the liquid night sky. A gale of force erupted out from its body a moment later as it soul shattered, splattering the hall in its remains. The neverborn's soul, in lack of a better term, was scattered to the edges of the dark prince's realm, until it could reconstitute itself.

Collapsing against the wall of the Nemi, I slowly wiped the still burning paint like ichor from myself. While my clothing was tattered scraps that barely hung upon my form, I had no desire to be running through this twisted hellscape with bare arse shining in the witch light. The strange daemon, Abl'tl-Thled managed to push itself up after a moment. He looked at me, his single black eye looking over me with visible curiously. It was at this moment that I had noticed that it was not a creature spouting flames, at least not just spouting it. The daemon's body was wreathed in fire, a constant crackle and sizzle as what little flesh it had was charred off unto its bones even as it tried to grow anew. The flames seemed to utterly consume it for a moment, cutting off my vision of the daemon, before dying down to a small flicker that burned away any skin that tried to find a hold on the daemon.

I found myself wondering if this was actually the creature that the eldar harlequin thought might be my savor. After a passing moment I broke the silence between us, "I was told that you might know how we might escape this realm?" While Abl'tl-Thled bore only one insect like eye, there was still a glint of utter glee that seemed to appear in its solemn orb.

"That I might mortal," the sound came unnaturally from its mandibles that clicked as it spoke. The daemon looked at me with some mild amount of amusement, "but you will die in this realm soon." A flame sprung into his unnatural grasp as its eyes settled upon the wound in my side, my blood congealing with fabricated speed, "what makes you think you can escape she who has claim to your soul?"

My response came with a short cough, "I don't." If Abl'tl-Thled's expression could have changed on it's chitlin face, I imagine he would be quite aghast or at least amused. As he stared over me, looking for something, I swallowed phlegm with ichor and forced my lips and bleeding mouth into a fractured smile. "I want nothing more than my freedom and you sir abrilt… ablet…. You wish the same, two have a much better chance than one. We can die alone or likely die together, but throne the chance of dying together is smaller."

"You speak mortal as if a choice is mine," the sound from Abl'tl-Thled was bitter, angry even, "when you hold my true name..."

"I do," came my response. The eldar had said I had to bind him, but I was not going to force the thing. I was not to become the thing I was escaping. It also takes little wisdom to know well enough that no matter how much power you have over something, if it wants you dead and you are keeping it in your company then it is not long before you are dead. If the creature was like me however, it knew neither of us could do this alone. My hand felt numb as I wiped my mouth and struggled to my feet, "you may do if you wish, but no betting man would put gelt on either of us. So what do you say, want to piss off a god together?"

Abl'tl-Thled tapped a clawed finger against what I could only assume was its chin. A moment later its left leg extended forward, right hand on chest, left hand extended flat to its side, and head bent down. In this ancient sign of bowing respect it accepted my offer, "tis a pleasure to meet you, little mortal." Coming from a being which did not stand much taller than my shin, the idea that I was little was almost adorable if it was not well as sad as it seemed. The creature looked up back up at me and nodded.

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Woo the story is alive and so am I... sorry this has taken so long and I kinda fell off the world. Life is a busy thing so have a short chapter, so I can get back into a writing. I am currently looking for a beta if someone wants to offer.

Why not check out my other stories on my FF or FP of the same name.

Please fave, follow, comment, or do whatever you feel the story deserve (11/12/16)


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